Teaching Unions

I have written here before about public school teachers and unions and how the mixture of the two is leading inexorably to the decline of public education in this country. One need look only at the recent developments where the State and county unions are advocating the institution of slot machine gambling and the casino-style environment in which slots gambling thrives to see what truly matters to teachers unions.

The president of the Maryland State Teachers union explains this posture by asking "what has changed" since keeping "neutral" on this issue over the last 10 years? Indeed nothing has changed. Ater last contract was signed with the county union (TAAAC), with its salary increases, the Annapolis Kapital declared that we have seen the last of the annual squabbling over teachers salaries. This lasted barely a year, and I predicted that it is not the business of teachers unions to stop squabbling over money and power, especially money; that the union could never be satisfied until every employee of the school system was a due-paying union member with a guaranteed pension at 100 percent of their current salary, free medical insurance and a class size of two perfect children.

"Half of all future slots revenue- estimated in the hundreds of millions within several years - would be dedicated toward public education..." through a trust fund, according Clara Floyd MSTA President. This reveals her ignorance of the state constitution which makes no provision for "dedicated" revenue. All state revenue goes into the General Fund. She panders to the Ann Arundel County school system by asking us to "imagine" how all that money would go to clearing a backlog of school construction and maintenance and hiring a slew of new union members, er , teachers.

I would rather imagine how all that money would go to decreasing our taxes, you know, since all that slots revenue would surely be offset by lower taxes, yes? Uh, no. Not a word about that in all the "deliberations, discussions, debates" the union endured to reach this difficult decision. Instead "we will continue to fight for" increased corporate taxes and "state investments in productive industries," whatever that means. Taxes are "the only major source of revenue" that will allow the union to fight for more money for less work.

The Kapital has since been forced to print letters to the editor from teachers who are appalled at their union pro-slots stance. The Kapital even ran a humours guest column by Stanley R. Baker, a Gambrills resident, and self-declared anti-slots-when-Ehrlich-was-governor and now a retired union member, I mean teacher. His Slots-for-Tots! program would take the Union stand a step further by actually installing slot machines in the schools. But the program he imagines is needed because we, the evil, money-grubbing citizenry have a bad attitude about keeping taxes low "...and damn the consequence."

Now comes this from Washington State Teaching Hacks:

"Teachers' Unions seem to be having an increasingly tough time hiding the fact that they really don't care about what's best for teachers, or kids for that matter. Washington state's teachers unions have refused a $13 million grant that would have gone to help teachers of Advance Placement course. Why? Because teachers would have been rewarded if their kids test scores improved. Read the whole sorry story here."
http://www.iwf.org/inkwell/show/20338.html

HatTip - Dad

Newt's Plea

For those of you who may not be on Newt's e-mail list, his latest attempt to get Republicans back into power is a plea to pursue nine policy objectives. This comes after losing two long-held GOP seats in Illinois and Louisiana where Newt "you-can't-just-purge-Republicans-you-don't-like" Gringrich finally realizes that the GOP is in trouble.

The Republicans are showing poorly in all the polls, on the issues, nobody likes Bush, etc. Also, how can poor John McCain possibly keep up his obvious popularity while the GOP burns? So what should Republicans do to burnish their image with the party faithful? Stop schmoozing with liberal Democratic party leaders? No. Start voting consistently for conservative initiatives, show some spine with the war on terror? No. Build the fence? No. What Newt believes we should be doing is to....not attack the Democrats.

"The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti- Reverend Wright, or (if Senator Clinton wins), anti-Clinton campaign, they are simply going to fail."

So we should run a campaign for the Democrats? See, this has been McCain's secret weapon, and we are going to spoil things if we point out that Obama consorts with bigots, racists and domestic terrorists or that Clinton is, well, Clinton!

He quotes a Washington Post poll to support his thesis that the GOP need to be nicer to the liberals:

"A February Washington Post poll shows that Republicans have lost the advantage to the Democrats on which party can handle an issue better -- on every single topic.
"Americans now believe that Democrats can handle the deficit better (52 to 31), taxes better (48 to 40) and even terrorism better (44 to 37). This is a catastrophic collapse of trust in Republicans...."

The Washington Post. Next to the NYT, the Post is the most agenda-driven pack of newsprint hacks in the world. Al-Jazeera has more journalistic integrity.

Earth to Newt....maybe those Republicans lost in Illinois and Louisiana simply because they could not bring themselves to articulate a conservative message. Kind of like, hmmmmmmm Wayne Gilchrest. You remember. Ol' Wayne? He would vote AGAINST every single one of your 9-step program's measures.

1. Repeal the gas tax AND pay for it with spending cuts. First, the notion of "paying" for a tax cut reveals the thoroughly debunked belief that tax cuts lead to lost revenue; when every single tax cut in the history of taxes has shown the opposite. If Gilchrest voted against this, as he will, he should do so because of this fact. But he won't vote for it because it is a tax cut.

2. Sell strategic petroleum reserves on the open market. He would vote no simply because the rest of the "sheep" are voting yes.

3. A "more energy at lower cost with less environmental damage and greater national security bill" No, because he doesn't understand it...neither do I. This is not an initiative, it's a string of politically correct slogans.

Oh...it just goes on and on like this. Pure. Unmitigated. Gall.

Race and Ethnicity

I hadn't heard about the "You must tell us your race and ethnicity" scam by the Anne Arundel County Public Schools until reading the letter in Sunday's Kapital. I asked my wife who confirmed that she sent in one of these forms with each of our kids. "It's required," she said and produced the letter from the schools chief: " In order to comply with...state and federal regulations for recording student race and ethnicity...."

Well it all sounds very official. What state and federal regulations? There are none. The County itself acknowledges this on its web site by providing an excerpt from the Federal Register where "proposed rulemaking" is normally published. Actual changes to the regulations are published in the Code of Federal Regulations.

My wife was right, as she usually is. The divide-us-by-race rule making offers guidance to schools systems on how to make yourself look more eligible for federal money in the form of "grants and contracts" with the federal Department of Education. This is geared more for contracts because federal procurement regulations make contracting with companies owned by certain ethnic groups faster and easier for an agency. I very much doubt that, as the letter writer states, there is any connection between this race data and the education of our children.

The writer, though, dwells on what the County school apparatus says our options are for complying. All you need to know is that we cannot be forced to disclose our race because the Civil Rights Act and other state and federal law since then make it a federal crime for any public agency to base any service on your race. Period. So if sending in a form that reduces you to a racial statistic so that the County can get more federal money rubs you the wrong way, and it should, then shred the form. If the County wants the money, they'll have to do this work themselves by observing the students. Tell your kids to refuse, politely, to complete the form themselves. The law is on your side.

More Peeves...

I do have fun observing people even though they really get on my nerves. So many of the items in the Peeves series will be about people. I'll try to break it up with non-people peeves.

1. People who don't know how to use a cell phone. You've seen them. They have to reposition the device away from their ear so they can, you know, speak directly into the microphone. Why? I don't know, yet. Most of the time they do this as though it is the normal way of talking. So they have to keep putting the earpiece back up their ears after speaking into the mic. I want to to tap them on the shoulder and show them how to use a telephone. By the time they switch back to listening mode, they have missed the first few words of the response, so they are constantly moving back into talk mode only to say "What? Can you repeat that? Wait a few seconds until I get the phone all the way back to my ear so I don't miss anything."

2. The cellphone commuter train talk. It wouldn't be so annoying if it weren't so predictable. It's like living on the set of Ground Hog Day. "Hello, It's me. I'm on the train. The train. I should be home in about 20 minutes." I find myself mouthing the words. I think I'll dedicate a whole Peeve to commuting on the MARC train.

3. People who can't seem to converse without the phrases "like" and "you know." I had hoped that this problem was confined to adolescents whose vocabulary is limited by their age and experience . However, again trapped and forced to listen to this dribble on the daily commute, I was struck by the conversation of two fathers, each raising at least one future conversationalist and the other with one more one the way. I don't know these men from Adam. They seem oblivious to the fact that they advertise this information while carry on their "conversation" such as "like, like, like, it's like, I was like, he was like." Not only are the parents, they are blithering idiots. I fear for their young.

Another set was a trio of women, one of whom was pregnant with her third or fourth child and made sure everyone knew she had a doctorate in epidemiology specializing in tropical diseases and was a professor at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. She reminded her girlfriends of this fact every two minutes, filling the rest of her conversation with "like and you know." I laughed out loud when she derided one of her colleagues as being, you know, like, unqualified. Her not-so-accomplished yak-mates were not as conversationally crippled.

But Mike, what do you expect? A MARC train-load of William F. Buckleys?

To My Obscene Commenters

It seems I have attracted a few refugees from the legions of braindead HuffPo and MO-DORG blog commenters. You know the type: the anonymous readers whose lack of intelligence, they believe, is compensated for or masked by the use of certain words and phrases that allow thinking people to profile them. So if you resemble one or more of the characteristics below, you may want to reconsider spending the time trying to comment on my blog:

1. Young (18 to 25) liberal with barely a high school education still living with his parents
2. Mature liberal (26 to 35) with barely a high school education still living with his parents, who are liberals
3. Women of any age who bore the children of one of the above (and will soon come to resemble the "parents" part of "living with his parents.")
4. I don't believe anyone over the age of 40, regardless of education, considers obscene language appropriate outside of a bowling alley

I'm sure that another Bud Lite and a few more games of KENO will be a better way to spend your time.