“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.

Under O-buma Redux

Voters caught on rather quickly as to what sort of change we should expect from O-buma.  After two excruciatingly long years in office, the electorate gave him and his merry band of thieves a swift kick that returned the House of Representatives to Republicans and significantly tilted the Senate's balance of power.  Why did this radical transformation occur?  To paraphrase Joe Louis, O-buma can run around lying about taxes and the economy, but he can't hide from the numbers.

Quite a lot has happened to us under the O-bumatron regime,and most of it has been bad for the country.

This chart reveals the the party-of-welfare's two year track record from January, 2009, to February 15, 2011.  The price of gasoline is up nearly 70%; corn is up 78%; unemployment is up 24%; the number of food stamp recipients is up 35%; the dollar has lost 8.6% against the yen, and the national debt has increased by 32%.  One significant increase was in the number of federal bureaucrats; there numbers swelled by over 100,000.  Great work, geniuses.

Although this article was posted last year, it does reflect our national trends.  O-buma and company have us hurtling down the road to third world status, and they are dithering and blithering, trying to protect their selfish interests at the expense of national sovereignty.  "The United States by every measure is hanging on by a thread to its First World status.  Saddled by debt, engaged in wars on multiple fronts with a rising police state at home, declining productivity, and wild currency fluctuations all threaten America's future."

• Unemployment is twice acceptable levels.
• The US is economically dependent on foreign countries.
• Schemes to decrease liberty are put into effect by unelected bureaucrats.
• Political corruption is rampant.
• Civilian police use military grade weapons and tactics
• Infrastructure is crumbling as almost all states near bankruptcy.
• The middle class is rapidly disappearing.
• Quantitative easing has decreased the dollar's value tremendously.
• Most media sources are controlled by government.
• Plans exist to force private investment it Treasury bonds.

Sadly, "a full-blown military presence in American cities has been planned by the US Army War College."

Despite all of the bad news, bankruptcy is the greatest threat to the US.  Concerning China's Dagong Global Credit Rating Company's decision to lower the US rating from AAA to AA, this Bloomberg article hypothesizes that an "alien arriving from outer space might take one look at America's balance sheet and buy Indonesian debt instead."
 
O-buma and the theftocrats have turned their backs on the nation and have robbed taxpayers in order to reward their loyal lackeys.  This opinion piece argues that the empty suits who have mismanaged the economy have put government ahead of the people.  One of the main reasons that the "$800 billion stimulus failed is that so little of it was directed to firing up the locomotive of the economy, the private sector, and so much of it was spent to ensure that government workers did not have to share in the national sacrifice."

Anyone "who thinks that the Obama party is ever going to cull the tens of millions of government workers or scores of millions of government beneficiaries to put America's house in order is deluding himself."  O-buma had Nancy Pelosi reconvene Congress so that the federal government could borrow an additional $26 billion from China in order to keep redundant bureaucrats on the government payroll.  This is what has happened under O-buma.  The results of the 2010 election should be repeated in 2012. 

It seems that there are mostly two types of people in this world: there are people who make mistakes and those who will not admit making mistakes.  For anyone who made the grievous error of voting for O-buma in 2008 and is still advertising it, here is a useful product.

May your gods be with you.