Category Archives: News

News

Are teacher unions interested in helping your children to succeed in life?

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This is a great article from the Wall Street Journal. (H/T Club for Growth)

Excerpt:

In her weekly “What Matters Most” newspaper column, Randi Weingarten recently bid the Big Apple farewell. Ms. Weingarten has been elevated to president of the national American Federation of Teachers from head of its New York City affiliate, and she had some notable parting words: “One of the most rewarding (and exhausting) things about working in public education in New York City is that it is the best laboratory in the world for trying new things.”

Well, it could be, if it weren’t for Ms. Weingarten’s union. Since taking over in 1998, she has done everything she could to block significant reforms to New York’s public schools. Take her opposition to charter schools. She resisted raising the state cap on charters from 100 unless the union could organize them. (She lost and the cap now is 200.)

Ms. Weingarten was also against merit pay for individual teachers. She supported a law that bars school districts from linking teacher tenure to student test scores. In return for even the mildest pension reforms, Ms. Weingarten recently won a concession that teachers no longer need to work on the two days before the start of the school year. Meanwhile, she has fought to ensure that the Absent Teacher Reserve Pool keeps allowing teachers whom no principal wants to hire to receive their full salaries. New York spends an estimated $150 million on this and on Teacher Reassignment Centers (for instructors who have been accused of misconduct) alone.

Speaking of money, Ms. Weingarten has long been among the union leaders claiming that more cash will fix public education. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has paid for the modest reforms he’s been able to implement by increasing spending to $22 billion from $13 billion, much of that in teacher salaries. The four-year high school graduation rate in New York City is now 56%. In union politics, results like these are how you win a promotion to national leadership.

I blogged before about the NYC teachers removed from their duties who are still being paid.

But there’s more to it than that. My Christian readers should also be aware that teacher’s unions, like most unions (but not all!), are also very interested in promoting left-wing, anti-family social programs. (Weingarten herself is openly gay)

If you missed my post about Obama’s appointment of a gay activist to be the director of “safe schools”, check it out here.

The take-home lesson for you is not to vote for Democrats just because they say they will spend more money on education. What Democrats really mean is that they will spend more money on teacher’s unions, so that the teachers can turn around and advocate for leftist policies, like abortion and same-sex marriage, using union dues.

News

Venezuela nationalizes Spanish-owned bank

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More communism from Obama’s communist buddy.

Excerpt:

President Hugo Chavez’s government assumed control of Venezuela’s third-largest bank on Friday – making the state the largest player in the nation’s banking system.

The purchase of the Spanish-owned Banco de Venezuela gives Chavez’s socialist government control over more than one-fifth of bank deposits as he tightens his grip over the economy.

The acquisition will “strengthen the public banking system,” which favors sectors including agriculture, energy, housing and tourism, Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez said in a statement.

…Combined with other state banks, the government will now control about 21 percent of deposits and 16 percent of loans, a payroll of 15,000 employees and 651 bank branches.

…Like the rest of the economy, Venezuela’s banking sector is already highly regulated, with the government dictating interest rates and commissions.

Under Chavez, Venezuela has nationalized major players in the steel, electricity and other sectors, including four major oil projects, since 2007.

The Venezuelan consulting firm Ecoanalitica calculates those nationalizations have cost Chavez’s government some $23 billion.

Things are so much more efficient when no one owns anything except the state bureaucrats. Look how well the Soviet Union did.

News

The Democrats make war on science to protect their faith-based policies

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Did everyone hear about how the EPA, (a government agency), suppressed a report questioning global warming? Basically, the Democrats wanted to pass the cap-and-trade bill without facing any criticism of their faith in man-made global warming. So they told Carlin not to publish his report or speak about it to anyone. Alan Carlin went ahead and released the report to CEI anyway. And now he tells the whole story in the WSJ.

In the Wall Street Journal. (H/T CEI)

Mr. Carlin and a colleague presented a 98-page analysis arguing the agency should take another look, as the science behind man-made global warming is inconclusive at best. The analysis noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend. It pointed out problems with climate models. It highlighted new research that contradicts apocalyptic scenarios. “We believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA,” the report read.

The response to Mr. Carlin was an email from his boss, Al McGartland, forbidding him from “any direct communication” with anyone outside of his office with regard to his analysis. When Mr. Carlin tried again to disseminate his analysis, Mr. McGartland decreed: “The administrator and the administration have decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. . . . I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office.” (Emphasis added.)

Mr. McGartland blasted yet another email: “With the endangerment finding nearly final, you need to move on to other issues and subjects. I don’t want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research etc, at least until we see what EPA is going to do with Climate.” Ideology? Nope, not here. Just us science folk. Honest.

The emails were unearthed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Republican officials are calling for an investigation; House Energy Committee ranking member Joe Barton sent a letter with pointed questions to Mrs. Jackson, which she’s yet to answer. The EPA has issued defensive statements, claiming Mr. Carlin wasn’t ignored. But there is no getting around that the Obama administration has flouted its own promises of transparency.

In case you missed it, CEI wrote a lot more about the Democrats’ war on science here and here.

I blogged previously about how the Democrats undermine science in the university with their affirmative action policies, and how they insist on spending money on unproven ESCR, when ASCR has all the proven cures.