-By Warner Todd Huston
The Chicago Public School system is out of money. Like every business in the real world one solution was to layoff workers, in this case some 700 teachers. In the real world that is the way the cookie crumbles. Such employees would put themselves on the market and look for new jobs. Life moves on. But in the world of public employees unions, such employees run to the judges they’ve bought and the law they wrote themselves and had passed by politicians bought and paid for. So taxpayers are forced to give them concessions, paybacks, and special favors. It all amounts to more proof of union graft and corruption at its most common.
This has happened once again in Chicago as the teachers union went to court to prevent the everyday, common cost cutting measure of laying off workers that every normal American is faced with. And, like the true Chicago Way- styled politics that Illinois is used to, the “law” that was written by unions, paid for by unions, and passed by unions was invoked by judges placed in their court rooms by union money.
And who is left holding the bag? The taxpayers, of course.
As we find out in the Tribune story, tenured teachers continue to get paid for up to 10 months AFTER being laid off while they search for a new job. So even when teachers are laid off the government has to keep paying them for almost a year.
If any normal American had that sweet deal they’d never work more than two months a year!
Now, don’t mistake my point here. I am 100% positive that more cutting could be had in the administration end of the Chicago Public School system. I am in no way saying that by only laying off a few teachers the budget crunch would be solved.
But the arrogance of these teachers to demand that the taxpayers pay them as they sit at home watching Oprah for up to 10 months is a conceit worth highlighting. No one in the real world has such a sweet deal, for sure.
It should be pointed out that these backroom deals that make suckers out of the taxpayers are common between these big money unions and the politicians, lawyers, and judges they have bought. It is not just teachers unions we are talking about here but every public employee union.
It is a criminal racket they have going, for sure. They buy politicians that give them great benefits and shiny new laws that give them favors. Then they supply the lawyers for these compliant pols so that these new kickback laws can be written because Lord knows none of our politicians actually write their own legislation anymore. Then compliant, bought and paid for judges back them up when these tailor made, illicit laws are “violated.”
And notice who is completely cut out from this political, legislative, and judicial circle? Yep, the voters who are forced to pay for it all. They have no say whatever in the special deals that the unions purchase with their millions in political campaign donations.
This is the reason that public employee unions should be made illegal. They are antithetical to good government.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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