Domestic Terrorist Denied University Accolade of Emeritus Status

-By Warner Todd Huston

Leave it to University liberals to suddenly take strong stands just when it makes absolutely no difference at all.

Domestic terrorist William Ayers, close personal friend to Barack Hussein Obama, has finally been denied something by a publicly funded university and at this late date it is a meaningless gesture.

For decades and decades this anti-American cretin has been spreading his hatred of the United States to students at the University of Illinois in Chicago but now after spreading his maliciousness for so long he is contemplating retirement.

But the 60’s radical and bomber William Ayers wanted one more little accolade from UIC, one more little piece of paper he could frame for his wall of liberal praise. He wanted to be awarded UIC emeritus status.
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Domestic Terrorist Denied University Accolade of Emeritus Status”


Unions Prevent Kids from Learning in L.A.

-By Warner Todd Huston

The L.A. Times has been publishing a great series about how the city’s schools have been dropping the ball on education. Specifically, the Times points out that the L.A. schools district has had at its disposal stats that could have helped it to engineer a better education policy for its students but has ignored these stats. Why have they ignored these stats? Fear of unions.

The Times has a database of the effectiveness of nearly 6,000 L.A. area teachers. These findings, the Times informs us, were based on a method called “value-added analysis. It is a method that is beginning to be used to rank teachers and help administrators design a more effective education for kids all across the country.

The Times also says that the L.A. school administrators had this info all along and never used it. Why would that be? (my bold below)
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Unions Prevent Kids from Learning in L.A.”


Miss. School: Only White Students can be Class Prez, Only Blacks Vice Prez

-By Warner Todd Huston

In Mississippi, Nettleton Middle School is finally doing away with its policy of portioning school class officer positions by race. As the policy stood before this month, the student officer positions were set up so that if you wanted to run for eighth grade class president you had to be white while if you wanted to be vice-president, why you had to be black.

Before you get the wrong idea, here, this is a 30-year holdover policy meant to assure that both blacks and whites were represented on the school student council in Nettleton. It isn’t a new policy by any means.

This year when the memo went home to parents about the racial requirements to run for class officer positions, though, the school district was questioned on the efficacy of the practice. So, after 30 years the board finally decided to get rid of the old policy. Superintendent Russell Taylor released a statement explaining the decision made at an “emergency session” of the school board.
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Miss. School: Only White Students can be Class Prez, Only Blacks Vice Prez”


Missouri Grade School: Singing ‘Happy Birthday’ Song is ‘Insensitive’

-By Warner Todd Huston

Fox News Radio’s Todd Sterns reported that a Missouri elementary school tried to ban the singing of “Happy Birthday To You” in order to be “sensitive” about those students that might find singing in public to be “offensive.”

In a letter sent home to parents, school Principal Jodi Davidson (pictured) explained that the ban on the venerable song was because, “singing is not permitted due to the sensitivity of all student beliefs.”

As soon as outraged parents began to complain, our supersensitive principal reversed course and on August 23 sent a letter rescinding the ban.

Catch this lie being told by Principal Davidson to cover for her original politically correct decision:
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Missouri Grade School: Singing ‘Happy Birthday’ Song is ‘Insensitive’”


Obama’s Union Bailout: A Good Crisis Going to Waste

-By Warner Todd Huston

Even the New York Times can’t ignore the fact that Obama’s latest union bailout cash isn’t going to help anyone keep their jobs, and The New York Times is really good at ignoring things that make Democrats look bad.

A few weeks ago Nancy Pelosi called the House of Representatives back into a special session because there was a crisis in education, don’t you know. It was a crisis that she didn’t want to go to waste, naturally. As Speaker of the House she had the power — one likely to evaporate with the 2010 elections — to help Barack Obama give his union pals another $26.1 billion of the taxpayer’s money and she couldn’t resist the urge to fill pockets with other’s people’s money at least one more time.

Early in August, Pelosi triumphantly announced on her Twitter feed, “I will be calling the House back into session early next week to save teachers’ jobs and help seniors & children.”

We’re helping old people, it’s for the children, we are saving teacher’s jobs. It’s a crisis that we can’t ignore, darn it! Yes, Rahm, it’s also a crisis that we can’t let go to waste.
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Obama’s Union Bailout: A Good Crisis Going to Waste”


How Teachers Unions Abuse Non-Union Teacher Paychecks

From the Independent Teachers for Colorado blog…

Check out this new Independent Teachers video about what happens when a non-union school employee who is forced to opt out of paying union fees every year misses the deadline because of family medical emergencies:

Due to family medical hardships, non-union Pueblo school employee Becky Robertson missed an annual deadline to opt out of union fee paycheck deductions. The union rejected her appeal. Though she had chosen not to be a union member, Becky ended up paying the union hundreds of dollars that could have been used for medical bills and other expenses. Why do Colorado laws allow this type of abuse to continue?


Union Member Fired by Union for… Organizing a Union?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Now, this story is a bit confusing (he says tongue in cheek). We have our friend Mr. Jim Callaghan who works — or used to work, anyway — for the United Federation of Teachers, America’s biggest teachers union. Yet, this happy union organizer was fired by the UFT this week. Why was he fired? Because he was organizing a union.

Ah, but it’s not as cut and dried as it seems because Mr. Callaghan wasn’t just organizing any old union, he was trying to organize a new union comprised of the nonunion workers at the UFT headquarters.

So let’s get this straight. Mr. Callaghan was a union member working for the union at its headquarters and he was fired for trying to organize the nonunion workers that work at the union headquarters?
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Union Member Fired by Union for… Organizing a Union?”


Union To Boycott Newspaper for Exposing Union Failures

-By Warner Todd Huston

Now usually when someone points out that one has done something badly or has failed in something, the average person would look at those accusations and assess where they went wrong in order to correct the situation for the future. Not unions, though. Unions boycott those that point out union failures. Such is the case in Los Angeles as union teachers are organizing a boycott of the L.A. Times for daring to point out that kids in the L.A. school district are all too often failing miserably.

In a series of recent articles the Times used student test scores to estimate the effectiveness of L.A.’s teachers. This infuriated the union.
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Union To Boycott Newspaper for Exposing Union Failures”


Calif. Teachers Unions Endangering Kid’s Lives

-By Warner Todd Huston

Reason Magazine explores the appalling situation in California where teachers unions were able to strongarm the legislature to deny teacher training for the use of Diastat, an anti-seizure drug meant to keep kids afflicted with epileptic conditions from dying in school.

The drug has been approved by the federal government to be administered by non-medical personnel through the delivery system approved and widely distributed, but teachers unions opposed this safe delivery system and the brief teacher training program. The unions claimed it was because they were trying to make sure that kids were “safe,” but the real reason is that the unions were just trying to increase the number of union member’s jobs in schools. Far from helping save kid’s live, the unions were trying to create jobs for themselves.

You see, the unions feared that if this drug were approved to be administered to afflicted kids by non-medical personnel then schools might fire school nurses. It isn’t about kid’s health. It’s about union jobs.


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Calif. Teachers Unions Endangering Kid’s Lives”


New Chicago Teachers Union Head is Same-Old-Same-Old

-By Warner Todd Huston

New Chicago public teachers union chief Karen Lewis could have come into office as a visionary that would bring some sanity to teachers union bloated demands in this era of the worst economy since the Great Depression. She could have seen the good sense of lowering expectations. She could have taken the stance of refusing to take pay raises for Chicago’s teachers as a motion of good faith in negotiating. Unfortunately, Lewis has proven herself to void of vision and stuck in the 1990s by continuing obscene union demands of constant raises and ever greater perks for union members.

In a day when unions are losing the last shred of good will that they once enjoyed in the public, Karen Lewis stood stiff-necked and refused to compromise with Chicago School head Ron Huberman. Lewis rejected giving up an automatic 4% raise in exchange for preventing layoffs.

She’d rather grab for the cash than save teacher’s jobs.
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New Chicago Teachers Union Head is Same-Old-Same-Old”


$26.1 Billion Union Bailout Went to States that Didn’t Need it

-By Warner Todd Huston

As I mentioned in a previous discussion on the Democrats $26.1 billion bailout for unions that Speaker Pelosi pushed through Congress at the last minute this summer, there was no need for the money for the stated purpose of “saving teachers” jobs. After all many states still had $30 billion of the previous stimulus that has yet to be used and others already have fully funded payrolls for at least this year.

Chris Moody confirmed my claim in his Daily Caller column today. He found that states like Arkansas, North Dakota, Tennessee, Alaska and others didn’t need this new “stimulus for their educational sector. They’ve got plenty already.

Not only that but Moody notes that none of this new money will even reach the schools until a month after school starts all across the land. So, how this new money will save anything after the tough decisions have already been made and the school year fairly begun is a bit hard to understand.
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$26.1 Billion Union Bailout Went to States that Didn’t Need it”


$26.1 Billion Union Bailout Bill Passes

-By Warner Todd Huston

Pay close attention, Delaware. Your Congressman, Mike Castle, just voted for the $26.1 billion union bailout. Castle was one of only two Republicans to vote yes on this bloated union pay off (the other was Louisiana’s Cao).

On a 247 to 161 vote, the House passed the $26.1 billion Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act. Democrats claimed that it would “save” the jobs of teachers, police and firemen across the country. In truth this is just a union payoff.

AFL-CIO union chief Richard Trumka was thrilled with Tuesday afternoon’s vote. “Today’s vote means that hundreds of thousands of teachers, firefighters and public safety officers will keep their jobs,” Trumka claimed. “It will prevent layoffs and provide aid to struggling state and local governments so that critical services aren’t cut … With today’s vote, House Republicans showed they value Wall Street and tax cuts for the rich over teachers, police and firefighters. This is yet another example in the laundry list of anti-jobs votes they’ve taken.”

Why the states needed this new money is hard to understand. They still have $30 billion in the last teachers bailout that has yet to be allocated. Well, maybe it isn’t so hard to understand when you realize that unions will be the biggest recipient of this money and we are just ahead of an election. Now Democrats can tout their payoff to said unions to pander for votes.

In fact, it is obvious that this was a union payoff in another way. The House was already on recess for the Summer when the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) pushed Speaker Pelosi to reconvene the House in order to push this massive payoff.

In return, the unions promised to kick their campaigning for Democrats into high gear in the coming months.

No, this wasn’t much of a back-room, sweetheart deal between pliant Democrats and grasping unions, was it?

So come on, Delaware, vote ChristineO’Donnell in November. Let’s get rid of the corrupt bargains for which Mike Castle is famous.

Rep. Michelle Bachman had a few words about this raw deal today, too…


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$26.1 Billion Union Bailout Bill Passes”


Outrageous Pensions Turning Ill. Teachers into Millionaires

-By Warner Todd Huston

Over at Champion News Bill Zettler has been doing a fantastic job of following and chronicling the completely out of control pensions of Illinois public employees and this week he asks why Governor Quinn wants to raise taxes just to make millionaires of retiring teachers.

Zettler found two teachers that will be making in excess of a million dollars in pension payouts.

Check out this obscene total:
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Outrageous Pensions Turning Ill. Teachers into Millionaires”


As Fellows Lose Jobs Union Fights For Stiffer Drug Benefits: Free Viagra

-By Warner Todd Huston

Unions have for years been figuring out new ways to screw employers and in Madison, Wisconsin a teacher’s union is looking for yet another way to slam it to the taxpayers by insisting that they get a free Viagra drug benefit.

In this bad economy, with states going bankrupt right and left, with teachers being laid off all across the country are Wisconsin’s teachers getting serious about negotiations and thankful they have a job at all? Apparently not, because in this dismal employment environment these teachers are trying to get free sex enhancement drugs.

The amorous union has demanded that a judge order the administration to reinstate the Viagra drug benefit that was sliced from the budget in 2005 to save money. And this demand comes at the same time that 482 teachers in Milwaukee have received layoff notices.
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As Fellows Lose Jobs Union Fights For Stiffer Drug Benefits: Free Viagra”


Even The Left Getting Tired of Teachers Unions?

-By Warner Todd Huston

An interesting article appeared in the Chicago Tribune lamenting the fact that teachers unions are standing in the way of good education for our kids by constantly and in knee-jerk fashion opposing school reform efforts all across the country.

Penned by the Tribune’s Leonard Pitts, no arch righty he, the piece scolds teachers unions and postulates that we may be at the edge of a new day in education where the whining of backwards and uncaring teachers unions may be properly ignored as school districts, backed by parents and voters, launch into a new wave of reforms that will finally have a positive affect on America’s schools that have been failing for decades.
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Even The Left Getting Tired of Teachers Unions?”


National Education Association Orders Members to Read Communist Guide Book

-By Warner Todd Huston

The National Education Association (NEA) is the premier teachers union group in the country. As such it is instructive to learn the sort of reading material that the biggest of all teachers unions tells its own members to study so that they can more adequately represent teachers in America today.

A look at the NEA website reveals a shocking recommendation to its members. The union that represents the teachers that we send our children to every school day suggests that its members read the communist-like manifesto of famed left-wing agitator Saul Alinsky.

That’s right, the NEA wants its members, America’s teachers, to become programmed by the ideas and policy prescriptions in a communist manifesto.
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National Education Association Orders Members to Read Communist Guide Book”


Teachers Unions Spent $100 Per Teacher on Politics

-By Warner Todd Huston

Education Next undertook for the first time an effort to find out how much of their members dues money that teachers unions spent on political action. The results are very interesting. The analysis discovered that, “national teachers unions and their state affiliates spent more than $100 per teacher in five states, with Oregon at the top of the list at $360 per teacher during the 2007-08 election cycle.”

Much of this money was spent to attempt to control the political debate above and beyond mere issues of education. Teachers unions spent millions trying to affect the political debate on taxes, housing, healthcare, gay marriage, congressional redistricting, and a whole raft of issues that as teachers they have precisely nothing to do with.
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Teachers Unions Spent $100 Per Teacher on Politics”


For All Teachers’ Whining, Almost Half of Chicago Area Teachers Make $100K a Year

-By Warner Todd Huston

As the Obama economy tumbles farther and farther down into depression, as states begin to face the reality of a budget crunch that can only be solved by layoffs of public employees, and as teachers find they are open to those layoffs, we commonly hear teachers claim that they are perennially underpaid and don’t deserve layoffs. Yet the Chicago Tribune has found that nearly half the teachers in many of Chicago’s ritziest suburbs are making over $100,000 a year in salary.

The Tribune reviewed the salary information of 132,000 Illinois teachers and in Highland Park, Deerfield, Park Ridge, Hinsdale, and other Chicago area suburbs it found that in some cases half the teachers — and in other cases over 40% — make $100K yearly (not including benefits) even as the educational system in Illinois crying poor and cutting staff.
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For All Teachers’ Whining, Almost Half of Chicago Area Teachers Make $100K a Year”


Another Sign of Unions Losing Allies

-By Warner Todd Huston

Again the New York Times reports on the confusion, anger, and loss of influence being experienced by shocked unions, this time teachers unions. Like the psychotic that lashes out at everyone around them when things are going wrong, at a New Orleans teachers union convention there is a lot of harsh words for former friends in the Obama administration the Times reports.

Listen to this falderal from Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, as he spoke to the assembled, “This is not the change I hoped for… Today our members face the most anti-educator, anti-union, anti-student environment I have ever experienced.”
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Another Sign of Unions Losing Allies”


Worst Teachers Rewarded by Unions, New Teachers Abandoned

-By Warner Todd Huston

Last week the Chicago Tribune published an editorial detailing the biggest reason why unions as they have operated in the U.S. for decades are an illegitimate venture. The Trib published a plea to new Chicago teachers union chief Karen Lewis not to protect the bad teachers under her charge and to help the younger teachers that haven’t yet proved to be bad for kids by allowing the bad ones to be laid off without complaint.

The Trib’s editorial called the practice of keeping bad teachers “dancing lemons,” revealing the sad practice of shuffling bad teachers around the system instead of firing merely because they may have tenure on the job. While new teachers are automatically laid off due to budget cuts, teachers that have a disciplinary problem or a troubled history are kept because they’ve been on the job longer. This is wrong and reflects badly on the union and teachers alike, not to mention that it leads to a bad education for our kids.
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Worst Teachers Rewarded by Unions, New Teachers Abandoned”


New York Teachers Union Has Branch in Florida?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The outrage of union activities never ceases to amaze. From the Education Week blog we find that the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the teachers union of New York, spends almost $200,000 a year of its member’s dues money on an office in Boca Raton, Florida! As EdWeek drolly says, “That’s not peanuts for a union fretting about its financially strapped members.”

Turns out that the reason the office exists is because of a union perk to retired teachers: permanent summer jobs at nearly $50 and hour.

According to Ed Week it’s called “retention rights.” The deal is that teachers with long tenure can come back each summer from their cushy retirement homes in Florida and take summer teaching jobs that would otherwise go to current, working teachers. These retired teachers essentially have first dibs on those summer jobs above the claims of the current workforce of New York educators. Retired teachers have a huge vested interest in keeping tabs on their old union, vote heavily to retain this perk, and they make huge cash taking advantage of the perk. So, the Boca office is there to serve them.

Ed Week details how lucrative this perk is for retired teachers.
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New York Teachers Union Has Branch in Florida?”


Teachers Union Extorts Parents for Campaign Cash

-By Warner Todd Huston

The indispensable Mark Hemingway of the Washington Examiner recently caught another union outrage. This time it’s the teachers union in New Jersey trying to extort cash from parents directly, as opposed to merely extorting cash from parents through their taxes.

Hemingway alerts us to a New Jersey parent that was aghast that the NJ teachers union would be so blatant as to send a letter home with her child suggesting a novel new way to raise funds for teachers.

As both she and the letter she handed me stated, my daughter was to accomplish chores around the house with the goal of being paid by me for those chores the sum of $20. She would then have to hand the full $20 over to the school to make up for the shortfall in their overall budget which, ultimately, disallowed the kids to go on yet another class trip.

This parent was so incensed at the “mandatory” aspect of the fund raising letter that she called the school to complain. She was assured that despite all the rhetoric about it being mandatory, it was just a “suggestion.” The parent was, of course, skeptical of the later claim.
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Teachers Union Extorts Parents for Campaign Cash”


A Review of Film ‘The Lottery’: ‘Heartbreaking,’ How Unions are Destroying Education

-By SkyBluez

(Ed’s note: Sky_Bluez is one of my favorite Twitter pals and she wrote a great review of The Lottery, the film we discussed on Tuesday. It was originally posted on her blog The Song Remains the Same.)

Last night I saw The Lottery a documentary about the problems with traditional public schools in disadvantaged areas. The film follows four families who enter the lottery to get a chance at having their child leave their low performing public schools in Harlem and the Bronx and attend a much better performing charter school. The documentary shines a light on how the local Democrat political establishment and teachers unions throw road blocks at every turn and make it extremely difficult for more of these well performing schools to be available for parents who want them.

The film is very well done. You can’t help but feel invested in these children as Ameenah translates for her deaf mother, or Christian gets frustrated working on his addition with his father, or Greg Jr. Laments not wanting to go to “house #2” to visit his dad in prison. All three of these children are raised by a single parent and face great hardship . Then there is Eric Jr. who has better circumstances. Eric has two involved parents. His father is a Union bus driver and mother is an aspiring teacher. This family is torn because they are union supporters, but still want the best for their children, which is not public school.
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A Review of Film ‘The Lottery’: ‘Heartbreaking,’ How Unions are Destroying Education”


Union Bullies U.S. Marine

-By Warner Todd Huston

In the upside down world of unions, if you aren’t on their side you are an enemy to the country… even if you are U.S. Marine of 20 years service and have been a highly recognized teacher in a ROTC program for 14 years. Because he refused to become a union member and has accrued $500 in unpaid dues the union thugs at North High School in Worcester, Massachusetts had retired Major Stephen L. Godin fired from his ROTC teaching position.

“It just seems crazy that they’re gonna fire me over $500,” said Maj. Stephen L. Godin, senior naval science instructor at the Naval Junior ROTC Unit of North High School. “Everyone’s talking about finding good teachers – I haven’t missed a day in 14 years.”

It is crazy, especially considering the reason why Major Godin refused to join the union. He isn’t just a hide-bound, anti-unionist — not that these aren’t good reasons themselves. He has a dang good reason for not wanting to join the union.
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Union Bullies U.S. Marine”


Gov. Christie Knows Teachers Unions are the Schoolyard Bullies

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has decided that to protect our children’s futures beating the schoolyard bully is the way to go. But who is the bully? Is it the sign carrying, whiney teachers? No, it’s their powermongering, kid unfriendly unions pushing teachers to act like bullies.

The unions are the bullies and THAT is who Christie is staring down!

So far THIS governor is the real deal.


New Jersey Teachers Threw Away Decades of Goodwill

-By Warner Todd Huston

The New Jersey Star-Ledger has a wonderful little editorial excoriating New Jersey’s teachers for having destroyed their own reputation with the public because of their petulant behavior towards Governor Chris Christie’s attempts to balance New Jersey’s over spent budget.

Take a gander at this…

Once the patient darlings who nurtured our kids, teachers now look like insensitive, out-of-touch, can’t-think-for-themselves union robots who, when forced to face economic realities, clung to an insulting sense of entitlement, heartlessly sacrificed the jobs of colleagues, called the governor naughty names and used students as political pawns.

Ouch!
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New Jersey Teachers Threw Away Decades of Goodwill”


The End of Our Legal System: Judges Joining Unions?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Unions are meant for one thing and one thing only: to “get” for its members. They have one purpose and that is to take as much from an employer as they can take, to get as much money and benefits as they can get away with. Unions are not interested in assuring quality workmanship, they are not interested in offering quality to customers, and they most certainly aren’t interested in efficiency and modernization. Unions have but one purpose, to extort as many goodies as possible from an employer regardless of what it does to a business or a profession. Unfortunately, in the State of New York, judges are looking to “get” from the Empire State’s taxpayers regardless of what it might do to our legal system.

The New York Post reports that New York judges are toying with the idea of throwing in with the New York teachers union, New York State United Teachers, so that they can engage in collective bargaining.

One activist judge in particular is behind this effort according to the Post. Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Arthur Schack is a former teacher, member of the United Federation of Teachers has been agitating for a pay raise for quite some time.
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The End of Our Legal System: Judges Joining Unions?”


Texas Prohibits Unions Taking PAC Money from Teachers’ Paychecks

-By Warner Todd Huston

Well, here is a victory against union thuggery. The Texas Attorney General’s office has released an opinion (GA-0774) that prevents school districts from implementing automatic payroll deductions as directed by teachers unions from the paychecks of teachers for union spending on political action committees.

Here’s the most relevant paragraph as it appears in the summary at the end of the decision. (download .pdf file)

Because the Legislature has not expressly or impliedly authorized school districts to process payroll deductions for contributions to political committees such as TSTA-PAC and NEA-Fund, Texas laws prohibits school districts from processing such contributions.

So teachers unions in the Lone Star State will no longer be allowed to forcefully remove money out of teachers’ paychecks to that they can spend it on left-wing political causes. This decision will not prevent teachers from individually sending their dues to political causes nor will it prevent unions from spending on PACs and political causes but it will prevent the schools from using school resources to make the deductions and for using school accounting departments to keep track of those deductions.
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Texas Prohibits Unions Taking PAC Money from Teachers’ Paychecks”