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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
-By Larry Sand
A scandal has erupted at California’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which exists to evaluate teachers and protect children from those who should not be in the classroom.
Its mission is to “ensure integrity and high quality in the preparation, conduct and professional growth of the educators who serve California’s public schools.” The commission includes teachers, school board members and the state superintendent of public instruction. But a recent explosive report has revealed that instead of being a champion of children, the commission is a callous, self-serving club that ignores its mandated duties.
The first sign that something was amiss came in 2009 when commission lawyer Kathleen Carroll, sensing deep problems within the commission, began asking a lot of questions. In December 2010, she was fired.
Then, in April of this year, State Auditor Elaine Howle released a report that blew the lid off “one of the worst state run agencies” in California.
The report describes a backlog of 12,600 unprocessed reports of arrest and prosecution of educators as of 2009 — almost three times a typical annual workload. In 40 percent of the cases reviewed, after a report of misconduct was received, it took almost three months to even open a case. After receiving court documents that a teacher was convicted of a crime requiring mandatory revocation of the credential, it sometimes took months to actually revoke it….
Read the rest at The Mercury News.
-By Brett McMahon
It took an amazing amount of gall, guile, or both for a former Ted Kennedy political staffer to decry supposed Tea Party “terrorist tactics”in seeking to rein in the debt drowning our nation.
“It has become commonplace to call the tea party faction in the House ‘hostage takers,’” William Yeomans wrote. “But they have now become full-blown terrorists.”
Forget, for a moment, the lack of violence—verbal or physical—coming from Tea Partiers, which would constitute terrorism. Forget, also, that grassroots pressure on politicians to control profligate spending (sure to be followed by tax hikes) is neither an act of hostage takers or terrorists.
Instead, consider for now the actions of President Obama and his key backers from Big Labor. As John Mariotti described this week, the “president’s job killers” include a host of minions enacting harmful regulation and…
Read the rest at Townhall.com.
A timeline of Obama administration hatred of the tea party movement
WASHINGTON, D.C.— As reported by POLITICO on Monday, Vice-President Joe Biden behind closed doors described tea party Republicans as having acted like “terrorists.” Biden later told CBS News, “I did not use the terrorism word.”
In any case, the Obama administration has held the tea party movement in utter contempt since its inception, as shown by this timeline of White House statements dating from mid-April 2009:
Apr. 14, 2009: Asked about the Tax Day “tea parties” being held the following day (attended by hundreds of thousands of people across the country) White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said: “I don’t know if the President is aware of the events.”
Apr. 19, 2009: Asked about the April 15 tea parties on Face the Nation, Obama senior advisor David Axelrod said: “I think any time you have severe economic conditions there is always an element of disaffection that can mutate into something that’s unhealthy.”
Apr. 29, 2009: Speaking at a town hall meeting in St. Louis, Obama directly addressed tea party attendees: “Those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I’m not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around, let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security…But let’s not play games and pretend that the reason [for the deficit] is because of the Recovery Act.”
Aug. 4, 2009: Asked by reporters about the growing concern expressed by town hall attendees, Gibbs said: “I hope people will take a jaundiced eye to what is clearly the Astro Turf nature of so-called grassroots lobbying.” Questioned further, Gibbs said: “This is manufactured anger.”
Sept. 13, 2009: During an interview on Face the Nation, when asked what his message was to those at the previous day’s rallies, Axelrod said: “My message to them is they’re wrong.”
Americans for Tax Reform is a non-partisan coalition of taxpayers and taxpayer groups who oppose all tax increases. For more information or to arrange an interview please contact John Kartch at (202) 785-0266 or by email at jkartch@atr.org.
-By Larry Sand
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” - William Butler Yeats
“You can’t light a fire in an empty bucket” – Larry Sand
The Save Our Schools March, Rally and Pity Party went off as planned in D.C. this past weekend, although on a smaller scale than the organizers had anticipated. They thought they could attract 5-10,000 people, but according to Education Week, only 3,000 showed up. Of those 3,000, it is unknown how many were teachers.
Many of the protesters carried signs which pretty much captured their reason for supporting the event. Essentially, the messages can be broken down into two basic areas. The first were in the political-economical realm:
- Charter schools stole your kids lunch money
- students before bankers
- fund education, not occupation
- stop private interest from destroying public schools
- our children deserve the same education as Sacha and Malia
- Socialism is the alternative
The second type of signs was directed at the protesters’ near phobia of standardized testing:
- Who profits from testing?
- Education is more than test prep
- kids need teachers not tests
- testing is not teaching, end high stake tests
- my students are people not numbers
- children are more than walking, talking test scores
- data is a four letter word
- we want education not test preperation (sic) (The photo below speaks volumes!)
That the march was supported by several socialist organizations, including Students for a Democratic Society, Freedom Socialist Party, Radical Women and 56 labor unions, would certainly explain the leftward slant of messages in the signs. But it is the anti-testing animus that is at the crux of the marchers’ anger. The first quote in the subhead is from Yeats, and is featured on the SOS website and on several of the marchers’ signs. It tries to make the point that schooling should be about igniting children’s imagination, not teaching them facts. But if children don’t know any facts – about literature, history, science, etc. — all the imagination in the world won’t take them anywhere. Continue reading »
-By Warner Todd Huston
The lesson: if you are a union member, better to sit on your rear-end and do nothing than find gainful employment.
A poor Chicago-area carpenter who was sick and tired of waiting for his useless union to find him work struck out on his own and got a job with a non-union shop. Big mistake. Once the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters found out they tried to fine him $300,900 for having the gall to find work on his own.
Carpenter Nathaniel Musser is not sitting around and taking this outrageous treatment handed him by the feckless union, either. He’s filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the union with the National Labor Relations Board which will come up in mid-August.
If were Mr. Musser, though, I would not hold my breath that Obama’s union-sold NLRB will side with the poor, put upon worker here. This is the same regulatory board that extra-constitutionally decided that it had to power to prevent Boeing from opening up a new plant in any U.S. state it wanted to merely because the NLRB thought a few union jobs in Washington State might be at risk.
Mr. Musser is a member of the union but the union was offering him no work, so in 2009 he worked for a while with a non-union company. Th union then tried to fine the young man $300,900. Musser appealed the decision and the fine was lowered to a much easier to pay amount… a mere $200,850!
In explanation, Musser says that the union has a policy that members cannot resign from the union and he would have quit to work in a non-union shop if there was a way to do so.
Isn’t that just like the un-American unions? How is it possible in America that once you join an organization there isn’t a way to quit it? How the heck is that Constitutionally justified? What legal or moral compulsion makes you part of the union from the day you join until the day you die?
I hope Mr. Musser wins his case, but with Obama’s union bought and paid for presidency it isn’t likely.
(HT LaborUnionReport.com)
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Warner Todd Huston