I am not making this up. (H/T IOwnTheWorld.com)
(24 seconds long)
Transcript:
“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’”
“The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”
Elect “silver spoon” Democrats, and this is what you get.
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.
Stop the ACLU links to this LA Times interview with California Speaker of the House Karen Bass. As you know, California is in the worst financial crisis in all 50 states. Karen is very angry that Republicans are pressured by voters to vote against tax increases. She thinks that Republicans should vote like Democrats, regardless of what their constituents want.
Excerpt:
How do you think conservative talk radio has affected the Legislature’s work?
The Republicans were essentially threatened and terrorized against voting for revenue. Now [some] are facing recalls. They operate under a terrorist threat: “You vote for revenue and your career is over.” I don’t know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it’s about free speech, but it’s extremely unfair.
See, California is running a 24.3 BILLION dollar deficit, which is half the deficit that Canada is running this year. It’s so bad that they are issuing IOUs to contractors. And the Democrats think that tax hikes are the answer. By the way, her background is “community organizing” as well.
There’s a lot of stupidity and tyranny locked into those few words. The First Amendment guarantees the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, even apart from the “free speech” issues Bass casually discards. Elected politicians are accountable to the people who elect them in a free society. Politicians do not acquire lordly status when they go to the Assembly, or anywhere else.
Usually, politicians are smart enough to at least pay lip service to getting feedback from their constituents. Instead, Bass calls them “terrorists” for … what? Calling their representatives and telling them not to raise taxes even higher, in the state with the sixth-highest per capita tax burden in the nation? Expressing their opinions? Telling politicians they won’t get their support if they vote for a tax hike? That’s democracy, not terrorism, although I’m hardly surprised that Bass can’t tell the difference.
…Beware the politicians who consider dissent terrorism. They’re either idiotic beyond belief, or tyrants waiting for an opportunity. Bass might just be both.
Remember when dissent was the highest form of patriotism? Yeah, now dissent makes you a terrorist. This is what secularism and socialism amounts to: disagree with me and you’re the worst person in the world and anything I do to you is morally justified.
There is no difference between communists in North Korea and communists is the United States. They believe the same things. They are just on different stages of the same road to serfdom.
WINTERY KNIGHT 