Wednesday, June 06, 2012
They really outdid themselves. In Wisconsin and across
the nation, public-school employee unions spared no kiddie human shields in
their battle against Governor Scott Walker’s budget and pension reforms.
Students were the first and last casualties of the ruthless Big Labor war
against GOP fiscal discipline.
To kick off the year-long protest festivities, the
Wisconsin Education Association Council led a massive “sickout” of educators
and other government school personnel. The coordinated truancy action — tantamount
to an illegal strike — cost taxpayers an estimated $6 million. Left-wing
doctors assisted the campaign by supplying fake medical-excuse notes to
teachers who ditched their public-school classrooms to protest Walker’s modest
package of belt-tightening measures.
When they weren’t ditching their students, radical
teachers steeped in the social-justice ethos of National Education
Association–approved community organizer Saul Alinsky were shamelessly using
other people’s children as their own political junior lobbyists and pawns. A
Milwaukee Fox News affiliate caught one fourth-grade teacher dragging his
students on a “field trip” to demonstrate against Walker at the state-capitol
building.
The pupils clapped along with a group of “solidarity singers”
as they warbled: “Scott Walker will never push us out, this house was made for
you and me.”
Hundreds of high-school students from Madison were
dragooned into marches. When asked on camera why they had skipped school, one
told a reporter from the Wisconsin-based MacIver Institute: “I don’t know. I
guess we’re protesting today.” Happy for the supply of warm, young bodies,
AFSCME Local 2412 president Gary Mitchell gloated: “The students have been so
energized.”
“Energized”? How about educated, enlightened, and
intellectually stimulated? Silly parents. Remember: “A” isn’t for academics.
It’s for “agitation” and “advocacy.” We must never forget the words of former
National Education Association official John Lloyd: “You cannot possibly
understand NEA without understanding Saul Alinsky. If you want to understand
NEA, go to the library and get Rules for Radicals.”
Against a rising tide of rank-and-file teachers who
oppose their leaders’ extremist politics, the national offices of the NEA and
the American Federation of Teachers shoveled millions in forced union dues into
astroturfed, anti-Walker coffers. According to WisconsinReporter.com, strapped
state affiliates also coughed up major sums to beat back Wisconsin’s efforts to
bring union workers into the 21st century in line with the rest of the
workforce:
The Ohio Education Association made a $58,000 in-kind contribution May 30, followed a day later by a $21,000 contribution from the Pennsylvania State Education Association. New York State United Teachers gave $23,000 on June 1, the Massachusetts Education Association gave $17,000 on May 31, and a group of unions based in Washington, D.C., poured in $922,000 during the past week.
Even the Alaska NEA affiliate pitched in $4,000.
Back in the Badger State, the Education Action Group
Foundation caught Milwaukee teachers’-union head Bob Peterson on tape this week
bragging about how his school district organized bus runs and stuffed flyers
into the backpack of every K–8 student urging them to vote in the recall
election. No, this wasn’t a civic, nonpartisan get-out-the-vote effort. It was
a purely partisan self-preservation campaign. Educators must be “teachers of
unionism,” Peterson preaches. “We need to create a generation of students who
support teachers and the movement for workers rights, oppressed peoples’
rights.” Because, you know, asking teachers to contribute more to their pension
plans is just like crushing freedom fighters in Iran, Egypt, and China.
The progressives’ blatant exploitation of bureaucratic
authority over the nation’s schoolchildren — at the expense of classroom
achievement and fiscal sanity — isn’t sitting well with the public. A new
Marquette University Law School poll released on the eve of the Wisconsin
recall election showed that “only 40 percent of those surveyed said they had a
favorable view of public-sector unions, while 45 percent viewed them
unfavorably.” In addition, “three-quarters of respondents said they approved of
the law Walker signed requiring public employees to contribute to their own
pensions and pay more for health insurance, while 55 percent approved of the
new limits on collective bargaining for state employees that Walker signed into
law.”
Uncertainty reigned over Wisconsin as both sides braced
for a possible recount on Tuesday night. But from their first unhinged salvos
16 months ago in the state capitol right up until Election Day, the union
bosses have made one thing clear as a playground whistle: It’s not about the
children. It’s never about the children. It’s about protecting the power,
perks, and profligacy of public-employee union monopolies.
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