Sizing Up Classrooms

-By Larry Sand (Originally posted at City Journal)

It’s time to expose the “smaller-is-better” myth

Summer is in full swing, and teachers’ unions are going on the offensive. Perhaps hoping to build on the public-relations bonanza that was California’s “State of Emergency,” union activists and their progressive allies plan to rally in Washington, D.C. and around the country later this month as part of the “Save Our Schools March and Call to Action.” The public will hear from writers like Jonathan Kozol and Diane Ravitch about the indignities schools have purportedly been forced to endure in the wake of the economic downturn. One of their key themes will be the “class-size crisis.”

Teachers like smaller classes, and understandably so. The advantages include fewer papers to grade, students to manage, and parents to deal with. The teachers’ unions like smaller classes, too. Smaller classes mean more teachers and more union dues. And parents like smaller classes because they believe that their children benefit from more individual attention. Everyone agrees that smaller classes are better, right?

In a word: no. Much of the rhetoric supporting small classes is demagogic and runs afoul of the research. Let’s begin with the oft-heard union claim that classes are getting larger. Not quite. A U.S. Department of Labor chart, courtesy of teacher-union watchdog Mike Antonucci, tells the tale. Since the mid-1950s, the number of public-education employees — including teachers — has risen steadily and inexorably nationwide. Brief hiring disruptions occur only during recessionary times, which result in a minor diminution in personnel. Immediately following the downturn, however, the hiring resumes with gusto. The result is that since the mid-1950s, the U.S. student population has increased by 60 percent, while the number of public education workers, including teachers, administrators, and other non-certificated staff, has exploded by 300 percent. (For every new member in California, the union pockets more than $600 a year in dues.) Antonucci has reported on this phenomenon for years. When the economy inevitably contracts, the bellyaching and the hand-wringing about laying educators off begin anew.
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Sizing Up Classrooms”


CA Public Schools See Lower Funding But Higher Test Scores

– By Warner Todd Huston

It is pretty amusing to see the Sacramento Bee acting all shocked that less funding from the state didn’t hurt education and higher student test scores were realized despite the lower spending on education. But that seems to have been the case.

As the State of California has floundered state services have had to do with less tax money and the schools are no different than other departments. As the Sac Bee says, “conventional wisdom” states that schools need ever higher amounts of money to successfully teach our children. But, shock of shocks, the Sac Bee has found something that defies that purported wisdom…

Read the rest at RightPundits.com.


You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Union Wind Blows

-By Larry Sand

Twenty years of schooling in Los Angeles and you’re lucky if you can get any job, let alone one on the dayshift.

Bob Dylan penned the words in the headline (sans the union part) almost a half century ago but having been quoted by many, they live on. The latest example of the lyrics’ relevance can be applied to a new 58 page report commissioned by United Way and several civil rights’ groups, produced by the National Council on Teacher Quality and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation…and the reactions of a teachers union boss.

Teacher Quality Roadmap: Improving Policies and Practices in LAUSD was published last week, and there were no major surprises in it. Education reformers have been aggressively campaigning for similar changes for many years, and various recommendations from this report are already in force in other states. (While dealing specifically with Los Angeles, its findings could be readily applied to the rest of California. Local school districts do have some power, but education policy decisions are typically made at the state level.)
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You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way the Union Wind Blows”


Cal. Union Launches Effort to Recruit Republican Candidates

-By Warner Todd Huston

This is a novel approach. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), one of the largest government employee unions in the nation, has decided that they’ve had enough of all those darn Republicans that are… well… acting like Republicans. So, the union has lighted on a new way to be rid of all those darn Republican-like Republicans. They are going to sponsor their own Republican candidates in upcoming elections in the land of fruits and nuts.

The SEIU has created a new “Republican” political action committee (PAC) meant to recruit purported moderate Republicans to run for office to replace the Republicans now sitting in Sacramento. SEIU is calling this PAC the “Golden California Committee.”

The name of their PAC reminds me of the phrase, “don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.” This golden shower that the SEIU is trying to pull off doesn’t fool anyone. The SEIU has no interest in helping Republicans. They have but one goal, to implement laws and government regulations that give to government employee unions payoffs, higher salaries, and outrageous benefits and pensions that exceed anything that the general public will ever see. They know that the only way to do this is to control government from both sides of the aisle.
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Cal. Union Launches Effort to Recruit Republican Candidates”


Unionists Next Target for Destruction: Apple, Inc.

-By Warner Todd Huston

A four-year Apple store employee in San Francisco wants to unionize the low wage workers that help customers in Apple Stores across America. Should he succeed, this will, of course, take one of the few successful companies we have left in America, hobble it with jobs-killing union rules, and destroy its jobs like the rest of them.

Cory Moll, 30, has a plan to take a bite out of Apple, it seems. He is claiming that the minimum wage, retail jobs of the floor helpers at Apple stores are beset with “unfair practices.” So, he wants to organize the 30,000 retail employees in Apple’s 325 brick-and-mortar stores.

Using Twitter and Facebook, Moll is trying to get the rest of the country’s Apple store employees on his jobs killing bandwagon. Fortunately, he has yet to gain much support from them.
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Unionists Next Target for Destruction: Apple, Inc.”


Do You Really Know Who is Teaching Your Child?

-By Larry Sand

Hookers plying their trade while government turns a blind eye.

Consequences for sexual perverts? No, the state doesn’t seem to care.

Whistle blower fired for exposing massive corruption.

Rampant nepotism in government jobs.

Private bureaucratic empire using public funds.

The above could probably pass as blurbs for a sequel to the movie Chinatown. But while Chinatown was a fictitious movie sprung from the fertile imagination of Robert Towne, the above statements apply to an agency in the executive branch of California state government called the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC).

This entity whose mission is to “ensure integrity and high quality in the preparation, conduct and professional growth of the educators who serve California’s public schools” is in fact a corrupt, callous and self-serving club that cares nothing at all about your kids.

What is turning into a major scandal first came to light with little fanfare from the press in early April when California State Auditor Elaine Howle released a report that blew the lid off what she referred to as “one of the ‘worst state run’ agencies in CA.’”

Here are the “highlights from the auditor’s report:
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Do You Really Know Who is Teaching Your Child?”


CTA, Transgender Clownfish and Our Children

-By Larry Sand

The very creepy sexualization of young children, a part of the teachers unions’ progressive agenda, goes on unabated.

In the past few years, teachers unions in the United States have gotten into the perverse business of sexualizing children. I first wrote about this phenomenon several years ago. In 2004, the National Education Association gave its prestigious Human Rights Award to Kevin Jennings, the founder of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and the man who eventually became President Obama’s school safety czar. GLSEN is the group that presided over the infamous “Fistgate” conference held at Tufts University in Massachusetts in March 2000, where state employees gave explicit instructions about “fisting” and other forms of gay sexual activity to children as young as 12. The conference was secretly recorded and can be heard here. (Warning: The contents are extraordinarily vile.)

Then this past March, I dug up a story about an NEA “trainer of trainers” who at a U.N. conference claimed that oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms should to be “taught in education” to children as young as 11.
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CTA, Transgender Clownfish and Our Children”


CTA Desperation Days in Progress

-By Larry Sand

Cindy Sheehan, Code Pink and a band of fringe groups have joined the California Teachers Association protest in Sacramento

We are now in the midst of California Teachers Association’s desperation week or as they are calling it “state of emergency.” At the crux of the issue is that Governor Jerry Brown will unveil his revised budget on May 16, and deep cuts to the K-12 education budget could mean widespread teacher layoffs as early as next month. Californians are getting heavy doses of union demagoguery this week, as Brown works to forge a deal with Republicans who oppose any tax hikes.

As I wrote recently, there are many other ways to solve educational budgetary problems without raising taxes. However, none of my proposed solutions are acceptable to CTA because the union insists on maintaining the status quo lest its power be threatened in any way.

As CTA was making final plans for their week long protest, someone crashed their party — none other than Cindy I-am-sorry-but-if-you-believe-the-newest-death-of-OBL-you’re-stupid Sheehan decided to cash in on CTA’s event, figuring she could tag on to a group of sympathetic fellow travelers. (Ms. Sheehan, lest you forget, is a peace activist best known for her for obsessive hatred of George Bush, who set up camp near the former president’s Texas home to protest our involvement in the Iraq War.) Then, the radical Code Pink group and a few other fringe groups joined Ms. Sheehan.
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CTA Desperation Days in Progress”


Do SEIU Members Know Their Union Consorts With America’s Enemies?

-By Warner Todd Huston

This is one thing that always flummoxes me. Over the last few decades American labor unions have increasingly become adjuncts, associates, pals, close friends — what ever you want to call them — with anti-American groups like the Communist Party USA and various socialist, anti-Israel groups, and pro-terror groups like the many pro-Palestinian groups. So, what the hell are the regular, presumably true American rank and file members doing about this fact? Are they aware of it? If they are aware of it why do they sit idly by while their union leaders consort with enemies of the United States of America?

The May Day rally in L.A. is just the latest example of major American unions joining hands with commies, socialists, terror-supporters and anti-Americans.
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Do SEIU Members Know Their Union Consorts With America’s Enemies?”


Teachers Unions Continue Their Assault on School Choice

-By Larry Sand

CTA and CFT sponsor legislation that imperils charter schools in California.

On April 27, Rasmussen Reports released the results of a poll which addresses American voters’ sentiments about our public schools. Some of the more interesting findings are:

  • 72% say taxpayers are not getting their money’s worth from our schools, while only 11% think we are.
  • By a margin of 41-34 (25% were unsure), those polled said that spending more money on education will not improve student performance.
  • 61% said that public education had become worse over the last ten years.

Given the citizenry’s increasing disaffection with our traditional public schools, charter schools would appear to be a good alternative. Charter schools are public schools which are allowed to operate outside the boundaries of costly multilayered district bureaucracies and piles of restrictive union mandated rules and regulations.
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Teachers Unions Continue Their Assault on School Choice”


The Intersection of U Street and Main Street Does Not Exist

-By Larry Sand

The teachers unions’ radical agenda alienates them from the American mainstream

As I mentioned in last week’s post, during the week of May 9th, the California Teachers Association and many local unions, like the United Teachers of Los Angeles, will be taking to the streets in an attempt to convince legislators and citizens that cuts to education will not be tolerated by the unions. In other times this would be a winning strategy, but as shown by recent polls, the teachers unions are not the darlings of the public that they used to be.

While unionistas all over the country lament this loss of favor, they only need to look in their collective mirrors to understand why. They have managed to alienate too many Americans who previously had held them in a better light. The unions’ insistence on things like tenure and seniority privileges, which serve to protect only the bad apples, has begun to grate on the public. Additionally, the fact that they are tolerant of, and give outright support to extremist political causes is another reason the public is turning against them.

An example of the unions turn toward extremist politics took place last year in Los Angeles. Santee High School teacher and UTLA union rep Jose Lara took his students to Arizona on a “field trip” to protest Arizona’s new immigration law. In a YouTube video, Lara is seen standing in front of a wall-to-wall mural featuring a who’s who of murderous revolutionaries, including Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, while proudly displaying the motto Patria o Muerte, Venceremos!!! (Fatherland or Death, We Shall Overcome!!!). UTLA, while not a sponsor of the Memorial Day weekend trip, had no comment on Mr. Lara’s attempt to turn his students into an army of radical activists.
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The Intersection of U Street and Main Street Does Not Exist”


About That Big L.A. May Day Parade… A BIG Bust

-By Warner Todd Huston

Remember that L.A. May Day parade? It was supposed to be a big deal, you know? You see, there was supposed to be 50,000 protesters marching in downtown Los Angeles to protest over how rotten the U.S. treats illegal immigrants.

As JWF tells us, local LA TV was all about helping the purported 50,000 immigration protesters turn out its people to focus America’s attention on making sure illegal immigrants become fully legal. Nothing less than full amnesty will do.

Yep, 50,000. That’s a lotta folks. It would be a pretty big statement to have 50,000 protesters.
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About That Big L.A. May Day Parade… A BIG Bust”


Calif Union Chief Says You Taxpayers are Selfish and Full of ‘Envy’

-By Warner Todd Huston

You taxpayers should be ashamed of yourselves, says Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation. You big, selfish jerks should be happy to pay the taxes that gives government employees all healthcare practically for free and allows them to retire at 50 with their comfortable 40-year-long retirement pensions that pay government union members twice what you’ll ever see in your golden years.

I mean, who do you taxpayers think you are, anyway?

Interestingly enough, even the soft-headed, left-leaning voters of California seem to be getting sick and tired of the freebies give government union members at this point.

A recent L.A.Times poll found that Californians are about done with the ritzy government employees sweet deals and are becoming tired of being the union’s sugar daddy. They are in increasing numbers desirous of caps on the spiraling unearned government union pensions.
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Calif Union Chief Says You Taxpayers are Selfish and Full of ‘Envy’”


CTA Days of Desperation Coming to Your Town

-By Larry Sand

Fearful of taking a financial hit, California Teachers Association will be taking to the streets and declaring a “state of emergency.” But I have some questions for them when the demagoguery begins.

With California in a world of fiscal trouble and many people sick and tired of the unrealistic perks and benefits gained by collective bargaining, the California Teachers Association figured they had to take action. Their first idea was to go on a rampage the week of May 9.
The original plan included such disruptive strategies as…
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CTA Days of Desperation Coming to Your Town”


Another Democrat That Hates the US Constitution

-By Warner Todd Huston

Making it easier every day to assert that Democrats hate the U.S. Constitution, once again we find a Democrat in Congress expressing disgust with the law of the land. This time extremist, left-wing Democrat Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D, CA) was heard complaining to a lefty radio host that many of her new colleagues are just too darned concerned with whether or not the actions of Congress are Constitutional.

Last week Sanchez was on the low-rated Stephanie Miller radio show complaining that many of the 87 new freshman congressmen were too worried if what they were voting on passed muster with the supreme law of the land.

“Everything to them is unconstitutional,” she whined. “It’s unconstitutional, it’s unconstitutional, it’s unconstitutional.”
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Another Democrat That Hates the US Constitution”


Muslims Rail Against Baseball Team’s Jewish Heritage Night

-By Warner Todd Huston

Apparently the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is not happy that the Oakland A’s have scheduled its first Jewish Heritage night. In fact, CAIR thinks that the mere fact that the A’s even have a night to recognize Jewish fans is somehow evidence that America is out to get Muslims.

It must be emotionally draining to be a Muslim. After all, they seem to spend every waking minute finding new things to get outraged over, their every breath seems dedicated to finding people giving them slight. And that’s not to mention the suicide bombings, death threats, and murderous riots! The delusion must be all consuming and tiring. I know it’s tiresome, anyway…

Read the rest at RightPundits.com


When the Anti-Bulliers Become the Bullies

-By Larry Sand

California Teachers Association backs SB 48 – radical legislation that will reinterpret history, hurt children and cost the taxpayers money

As one who tries to keep up with the latest teacher union doings, a trip to the California Teachers Association legislative page is always illuminating. Recently, I found that the powerful teachers union testified in favor of SB 48, a bill introduced by California State Senator Mark Leno. If passed, this bill would alter the way history is taught, could psychologically damage young children while delivering a blow to the taxpayers of California.

The California Education Code as it is now written says, “Existing law requires instruction in social sciences to include a study of the role and contributions of both men and women to the development of California and the United States.” However, according to the legislative counsel, SB 48 would “require instruction (emphasis mine) in social sciences to also include a study of the role and contributions of Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, European Americans, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, persons with disabilities, and other ethnic and cultural groups, to the development of California and the United States.”
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When the Anti-Bulliers Become the Bullies”


An Orgasm for the Children

-By Larry Sand

NEA’s reprehensible sexual agenda goes on unabated and the MSM is MIA.

At a time when teachers’ unions are battling for their collective bargaining lives, courtesy of Governors Scott Walker, Chris Christie, John Kasich et al., it’s hard to go a day without reading a newspaper account of the latest union news. However, there is a story involving the National Education Association that has flown under the mainstream media radar.

I could not find a single MSM account of a talk given at a UN conference on March 3rd where Diane Schneider, representing the NEA at the “Commission on the Status of Women” said:
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An Orgasm for the Children”


Corruption and Political Intrigue in Government Employee Pensions

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Los Angeles Times has a disheartening report about the graft, corruption, and nest-feathering infesting the administration of California’s government employees pension fund, CalPers (California Public Employees’ Retirement System). It reports that subordinates were pressured into investing in to firms run by political buddies and that one of the former CalPERS administrators was “lucky” enough to have been handed a high paying new job in one of those politically connected firms after he left the government agency.

Some of these officials now under investigation are also accused of falsifying documents to further their schemes of self-enrichment at the expense of the people, accepting large gifts that went unreported, and earning millions in “placement agent fees.”
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Corruption and Political Intrigue in Government Employee Pensions”


No Citizen Left Untaxed

-By Larry Sand

NEA boss has it backwards when he claims that America cannot have a middle class without unions.

Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, America’s largest union, claims, “In actions more fitting for comic book arch-villains, a new crop of state leaders have launched blistering attacks on working families disguised as budget and education reforms, and many have sought to strip workers’ rights to have a voice through their union.”

If he is correct and the middle class is being threatened, it is the public employee unions (PEUs) that are doing the threatening. Fewer than one in eight Americans are in unions but more than 50% of them are in PEUs. It’s hardly a secret that PEU pensions are in the process of sending various states and cities around the country into insolvency.
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No Citizen Left Untaxed”


Public School to Parent: We’re in Control

-By Chris Slavens

His father, an Army commander, was being deployed to Iraq, and 6-year-old Jack Dorman didn’t want to be in school in the first place. He suffers from separation anxiety and had been visiting a therapist. Sadly, the boy’s day got a lot worse after he drew a picture of a scene from one of his video games, which featured zombies and stick figures, wrote that he wanted to die, and was forced into a psychiatric ward by school administrators against his mother’s wishes.

“They said it was out of my hands,” said an outraged Syndi Dorman. “They said they were in control and they could do this and had already called an ambulance.”

Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent Ramon Cortines refused to apologize for the incident, which occurred on February 7, and continues to insist that the staff of Taper Avenue Elementary, located in San Pedro, California, acted appropriately.
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Public School to Parent: We’re in Control”


RIFs, Grifters and Reality

-By Larry Sand

Excessive teacher hiring invariably leads to layoffs; teachers need to understand this trap and protect themselves.

We are now in the midst of RIF season. In California and elsewhere, when the economy is unstable, Reduction in Force (RIF) notices must go out to teachers by March 15th. These notices apprise teachers that they may be out of a job come June. School districts don’t know in March what their budget will be for the next school year, so they typically plan for a worst case scenario. It’s almost unheard of that all teachers who get the notices actually get laid off, but some will, and teachers must be notified if there is any chance they will lose their jobs.

When the school districts send out the notices, the teachers unions angrily point fingers at the district, insisting that they cut the bureaucracy instead and suggest that taxes should be raised rather than cutting back teachers. What the districts and the unions don’t say is that they are the problem; they are complicit in the process whereby teachers lose their jobs.
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RIFs, Grifters and Reality”


VIDEO: Calif. Union Goon Pushes Tea Partier While Yelling About ‘Fascists,’ Another Attacks Man in Georgia

-By Warner Todd Huston

Union animals escalating violence across the country…

BigGovernment.com has the startling tale of a Teamster Jacket-wearing union goon attacking a Tea Party member at a protest held in Sacramento, California.

Naturally, even as this union scumbag was manhandling a Tea Partier, he was yelling through a bullhorn that Tea Partiers are “fascists.”

The union thug was later issued a citation by Sacramento police for his physical assault.

I hate to say this, but I am afraid that these union thugs won’t be happy until someone is seriously injured at one of these protests. Unonistas cannot restrain the abject hatred they feel for Americans and the union left’s long, violent history augers that someone is going to get hurt sooner rather than later. I dearly hope that my fears are never realized, but it’s certainly hard to deny the distinct possibility. I certainly don’t want anyone hurt, here, not on any side of this budget debate.

SecularStpidest also has posted what it is claiming is an interview with the another guy that got manhandled in Atlanta, Georgia by a union thug…

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VIDEO: Calif. Union Goon Pushes Tea Partier While Yelling About ‘Fascists,’ Another Attacks Man in Georgia”


Tempest in a Seniority Teapot?

-By Larry Sand

Does a recent court ruling in Los Angeles really signal the beginning of the end of an unjust teacher seniority system? Or does the decision amount to nothing more than a zero-sum game, favoring some at the expense of others?

A recent “landmark decision” in Los Angeles is said to have made inroads into the way staffing decisions are made in the city’s massive school district. In fact, some say the decision will have national ramifications. But are these claims valid?

When teachers lose their jobs due to layoffs, the state education code says that they must be done by seniority. Hence the last hired is the first fired. Typically, the lowest performing schools are the most impacted because they invariably have a much greater percentage of new hires.
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Tempest in a Seniority Teapot?”


National Education Association: Big Union Bully on the Left

-By Larry Sand

While anti-bullying programs for students are currently in vogue in our nation’s schools, teachers need to recognize that they too are being victimized.

As president of the California Teachers Empowerment Network (CTEN), I talk to people about teachers and education all the time. Politically speaking, most people think that teachers are to the left of center. But in fact, teachers typically replicate the political population of the area in which they live. A teacher in Los Angeles is more likely to be left of center along with the rest of the local population. The average teacher in Fresno leans to the right, as is the norm for that farming community.

Interestingly, the National Education Association has done some polling on this issue. In the Fall 2010 issue of Education Next, teacher union watchdog Mike Antonucci reports, “NEA members lean no further to the left than any other large group of Americans. The national union conducts periodic internal surveys to ascertain member attitudes on a host of issues. These surveys are never made public, and results are tightly controlled, even within the organization. The 2005 NEA survey, consistent with previous results, found that members “are slightly more conservative (50%) than liberal (43%) in political philosophy.”
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National Education Association: Big Union Bully on the Left”


As We Lose Our Jobs, Unionized CA College Profs Want More

-By Warner Todd Huston

Without question we are living through the worst economic times in generations and Barack Obama’s policies aren’t helping alleviate the pain. Pain is, indeed, the watchword, too. Nearly everyone knows someone that has lost his job. Nearly everyone has lost money for their retirement. Everyone is feeling the pain. And no one is very sanguine that it’s getting any better. Well, no one but unionized university professors in California, anyway. They are so sure that things are better than ever that they expect constantly growing pay and even richer benefits to be borne on the backs of the taxpayers.

There’s a lesson in this somewhere.

California’s university professor union, the California Faculty Association, has looked upon the crumbling state of California in the economic disaster that is the United States and instead of seeing a goad toward austerity, the CA sees greater spending as an answer to what ails them.

The gal these unionistas have.
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As We Lose Our Jobs, Unionized CA College Profs Want More”


Child Molesting Teacher Can’t Be Fired Thanks to Union

-By Warner Todd Huston

In 1997 a Brooklyn teacher was accused of attempting to molest a sixth-grade girl at PS 138. As it happened, he admitted the behavior, but no criminal charges were filed when all was said and done. Still one would think the fact that he inappropriately fondled a teen should be enough to get him fired from his teaching position. But then again, in New York you can’t even fire a child molester if he happens to be a teachers union member.

Thanks to the fact that it is nearly impossible to fire a teacher, this lowlife has been drawing his almost $100,000-a-year salary to do nothing. You heard that right, to do nothing.

You see, even as the union agrees that this pedophile isn’t fit for a classroom, the union still won’t agree to his being fired. So, teacher Roland Pierre sits in a “rubber room” five days a week and does nothing and he’s paid $97,101yearly to do so. And that doesn’t include benefits.
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Child Molesting Teacher Can’t Be Fired Thanks to Union”


Beware When They Say a Government Program Will ‘Make Money’

-By Warner Todd Huston

The New York Times had a small story that it likely thought was just an amusing little tale of a quirky government program from Los Angeles. Centered on the gift shop run by the L.A County Coroner’s Department, the Times indulged such lines as “we’re dying for your business,” and headlined the piece “Dealing in Death, and Trying to Make a Living.” But one little part of the story should serve as a warning not to believe any politician or government hack that says their office or project will “make money.”

According to the Times the gift shop at the L.A. Coroner’s office was initially started in the early 1990s when a secretary working for the county noticed that mugs and T-shirts with the county coroner’s logo on them were popular items at forensics conferences. The county thought that a gift shop would be a moneymaker and when the coroner’s office floated the idea to the county government it claimed that the money the shop would make would pay for an anti-drunken driving course for teens.

Turns out it’s the ‘tother way ’round.
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Beware When They Say a Government Program Will ‘Make Money’”


Truth in Accounting Issues: California’s ‘Financial State of the State’

From the Institute for Truth in Accounting…

Chicago (November 29, 2010) Today, the Institute for Truth in Accounting released California’s “Financial State of the State.” After a review of the State’s 2009 audited financial report, the Institute determined the State is in a precarious financial position because it does not have the funds available to pay more than $195 billion of the State’s commitments as they come due. Each taxpayer’s share of this financial burden equals $18,000.

California law requires a balanced State budget. “If governors and legislatures had truly balanced the State’s budget, no taxpayer’s financial burden would exist,” said Sheila Weinberg, founder and CEO of the Institute for Truth in Accounting (IFTA). She continued, “A State budget is not balanced if past costs, including those for employees’ retirement benefits, are pushed into the future.”
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Truth in Accounting Issues: California’s ‘Financial State of the State’”


Union Outed Whitman’s Maid Story in CA Gubernatorial Election

-By Warner Todd Huston

Meg Whitman’s race for Governor of California seemed to take a nose dive right after it was discovered late in the campaign that she had employed a maid that was an illegal alien. The San Francisco Chronicle reports on the “tantalizing mystery” of just who it was that launched this torpedo at the Whitman campaign. Unsurprisingly, the SFChron has discovered that it was a union that did the dirty work.

The illegal alien, Nicandra Diaz, worked for about 8 years for the Whitman’s but was fired in 2009 once Whitman found out she was an illegal. So how did this illegal alien get so much press?
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Union Outed Whitman’s Maid Story in CA Gubernatorial Election”