Thursday, March 14, 2013

Current Events - March 14, 2013

Trouble in the Nanny State

By Ann Coulter
Like the proverbial monkey typing for infinity and getting Shakespeare, Mayor Bloomberg's obsession with reforming New Yorkers' health has finally produced a brilliant ad campaign.

Posters are popping up in subway stations and bus stops giving statistics about teen pregnancy that show cute little kids saying things like, "Honestly, Mom ... chances are he won't stay with you. What happens to me?" and "I'm twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen."

(Based on a recent CBS report, the kid could add, "Then again, I'm in the New York City public school system, so even if I graduate I won't be able to read.")

It's one thing to stigmatize "Big Gulp" drinkers, but liberals are hopping mad at this attempt to stigmatize teen pregnancy, 90 percent of which is unwed. To put it another way, if you're a New York teen with a distended belly these days, it had better be because you're pregnant.

Planned Parenthood's Haydee Morales complained that the ads are creating "stigma" and "negative public opinions about teen pregnancy." (I'm pretty sure that's the basic idea.)

Instead, Morales suggested "helping teens access health care, birth control and high-quality sexual and reproductive health education." Like the kind they got before becoming pregnant, you mean? Are you new here, Haydee?

Coincidentally, Planned Parenthood happens to provide reproductive health care! Liberals act as if gun owners, soda-guzzlers and smokers are innocent victims of the gun, food and cigarette industries, but the $542 million-a-year birth control industry is a quarry of angels.

The New York Times' Michael Powell explained in a column that, as a parent of teenagers, he's learned that the stupidest thing to do is resort to "the shame-and-blame game." Teenage pregnancy, he states categorically, is a "problem of poverty."

I think we have a chicken-and-egg problem, but let's stick to liberals' newfound opposition to shaming campaigns.

Far from opposing stigmas, liberals are the main propagators of them -- against cigarettes, guns, plastic bags, obesity, not recycling, Fox News, racist "code words," not liking "Lincoln" and junk food.

The stigma against smoking has gone so swimmingly that you can't enjoy a little tobacco pleasure 50 yards from another human being without some bossy woman marching over and accusing you of poisoning her.

California is currently running a series of "Reefer Madness"-style anti-smoking ads, including one that shows cigarette smoke going from a woman outside on her porch, up a story, through the door of another apartment, across the living room, down the hallway and into a room where a baby is sleeping. That would be the equivalent of the Bloomberg ads claiming teen pregnancy causes genocide.

And what exactly was the purpose of the Journal-News publishing the names and addresses of every legal gun owner in various counties in New York state a few months ago? To congratulate them? To start a hunting club?

No, I believe it was to stigmatize legal gun owners. The fact that we didn't already know who they were proved that the problem isn't legal gun ownership. All those legal guns -- and no rash of drive-by shootings!
Los Angeles has banned plastic bags at supermarkets, even though reusable canvas bags are portable bacterial colonies. But a little ad campaign describing the downsides of teenage pregnancy -- which is still subsidized -- and liberals howl in protest.

One begins to suspect that liberals aren't as interested in stopping teenagers from having illegitimate kids as they claim. Do they believe a teenager who gets pregnant out of wedlock is harming herself and her child as much a teenager who smokes? How about an unwed teen who smokes at a landfill?

It's only a "shame-and-blame game" when liberals secretly approve of the behavior they pretend to oppose.
Unwed mothers have been the perennial excuse for big government, going back to Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, who plotted in the 1960s to create broken families, welfare dependency and urban riots to pave the way for socialist revolution.

That's why single mothers are revered victims -- victims in need of an ever-expanding social safety net, staffed with well-pensioned government workers. As described in that great book, "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America," liberals concoct fake victims in order to victimize the rest of us.

The only thing single mothers are "victims" of is their own choice to have sex with men they're not married to. Liberals seem to believe that drinking soda is voluntary, but getting pregnant is more like catching the flu.
It would be hard to make the case that fast food, plastic bags and cigarettes do more damage than single motherhood.

-- Controlling for socioeconomic status, race and place of residence, the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is that he was raised by a single mother.

-- At least 70 percent of juvenile murderers, pregnant teenagers, high school dropouts, teen suicides, runaways and juvenile delinquents were raised by single mothers.

-- A study back in 1990 by the Progressive Policy Institute showed that, absent single motherhood, there would be no difference in black and white crime rates.

So liberals don't try to make that case. They just say they're against "shaming" and then go back to shaming gun owners, non-recyclers, smokers and "Big Gulp" aficionados -- while subsidizing illegitimacy.

http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2013/03/13/trouble-in-the-nanny-state-n1532906/page/full/

PK'S NOTE: The utter ignorance is astounding:

Bill Gates: ‘Some days I wish we had a system like the UK’ to give Obama more power

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, the wealthiest American, said on “some days” he wishes the U.S. political system were like England’s, so that President Barack Obama could have “slightly more power.”
Gates was asked for his assessment of President Obama’s job performance during an interview at Politico’s “Playbook Cocktails” event.

“Some days I wish we had a system like the U.K. where, you know, the party in power could do a lot and you know, you’d see how it went and then fine you could un-elect them,” said Gates on Wednesday.

“Now, over time, our system has worked slightly better than theirs, theirs has worked okay but so it’s ironic that right now it feels like I wish there was slightly more power in the presidency to avoid some of these deadlocks. So I think what he [Obama] wants to do and what he’s actually able to do, the gap is so big there that it’s hard to know in some ways.”

Gates praised President Obama for his education policy and commended former President George W. Bush for The President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

“I think the education piece is probably the most unappreciated piece there where Bush, he was definitely unappreciated for the AIDS work. I went to an AIDS conference where somebody mentioned Bush and the audience was like, ‘boo’ or something like that. Well that is deeply, ironically unfair.”

He called PEPFAR a “phenomenal thing” that would not have happened without Bush’s “leadership.”
“I feel the same way about a lot of the education things that have happened in the last four years,” Gates said.
 

Jay Carney Did Not Like ABC Reporter’s Question About Cost of Obama’s Golf Outings: ‘You’re Trivializing an Impact Here’

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Wednesday refused to entertain a question from ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl regarding the cost of one of President Barack Obama’s common golf outings.
Several reporters were questioning Carney over the Obama administration’s decision to cancel White House tours in order to avoid Secret Service furloughs and cutbacks due to sequestration cuts.

“The Secret Service told us that the tours cost $74,000 a week. How much is it going to cost for the President to travel later this week to Illinois?” Karl asked.

“Well, the president is the President of the United States,” Carney replied bluntly. “And he is elected to represent all of the people. And he travels around the country, appropriately. I don’t have a figure on the cost of presidential travel. It is obviously something, as every President deals with because of security and staff, a significant undertaking. But the President has to travel around the country. He has to travel around the world. That is part of his job.”

“How much does it cost for him to go and play golf?” Karl followed up.

“Jon, again, you’re trivializing an impact here. People will lose their jobs. Three-quarters of a million people will lose their job,” Carney said.

“This is about choices. You have a certain amount of–” Karl began before being interrupted.

“Right. The law stipulates what the costs will be for each agency. Those jobs will be lost, okay? And you can report on White House tours, or you can find out what the impacts are out in the real world, additional impacts are. This is a real-world impact here, and it is unfortunate. And it is an unhappy choice,” Carney added.

Carney went on to say “Congress made this choice” in regards to sequestration. Carney never did respond to Karl’s question about the cost of Obama’s golf trips.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/13/jay-carney-did-not-like-this-abc-reporters-question-about-cost-of-obamas-golf-outings-youre-trivializing-an-impact-here/

What We Still Don't Know About Benghazi
 
Yesterday, President Obama nominated a new ambassador to Libya to succeed Christopher Stevens, who was killed in the terrorist attack in Benghazi last September 11. Six months after that attack—and two federal investigations later—we still have an alarmingly small amount of information about it.

The Obama Administration made quite a mess in the media with its conflicting accounts of the attack, originally blaming a controversial YouTube video for sparking protests abroad.

After it came out that it was, in fact, a terrorist attack with ties to al-Qaeda, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shocked Americans with her statement, “What difference, at this point, does it make?”

As Heritage expert James Phillips said, Clinton’s brush-off “indicates that the Administration misunderstands the nature and scope of the Islamist terrorist threat.”

With a new Secretary of State and a new Libya team on the way, Benghazi can’t just be swept under the rug—because the safety of all of our diplomats is at stake.

Both the State Department and the Senate have tried to figure out what went wrong in hopes of ensuring that such a tragedy would not happen again. So far, they have failed.

Heritage experts note in a detailed new paper that “Fully understanding the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi is vital to preparing for future security threats to American embassies, consulates, and diplomatic missions.” Lives depend on what the government learns from this attack.

Scott G. Erickson, Jessica Zuckerman, and Steven P. Bucci explain that four key questions remain unanswered:

  1. Which counterterrorism and early-warning measures were in place to address security threats?
  2. Which risk assessments were performed and which risk-mitigation measures were adopted before the attack?
  3. What kind of contingency planning was undertaken and exercised to respond to armed assaults against U.S. facilities in Benghazi?
  4. How was the interagency response to the incident organized and managed?
These are fundamental questions—questions that should have been answered by now. And as the authors note, the conflicting accounts produced by the Obama Administration have made this inquiry unsettling from the start:
Given the conflicting narrative produced by the Obama Administration, there are two possible explanations. One possibility is that officials within the White House were uninformed, meaning communication with the State Department was woefully lacking. The other is that individuals within the White House consciously and deliberately promoted a public explanation of the Benghazi attack that was at odds with reality.
Our experts recommend that Congress establish a Congressional Select Committee to find answers. This type of committee steps in when there are sensitive issues relating to security—Select Committees investigated both Watergate and the Iran-Contra affair.

When dealing with the lives of American personnel abroad, it is not enough to issue a committee report. The State Department needs thorough answers, and then it needs to put the recommendations into action.

The life of the new ambassador to Libya may depend on it.
http://blog.heritage.org/2013/03/14/morning-bell-what-we-still-dont-know-about-benghazi/?roi=echo3-14877713947-11822123-81ad13eb51f9d8490fdc33fd9e7abf73&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBel

It's Time to Stock Up on Precious Metals, Guns, and Ammunition

If you are a regular reader of American Thinker, you already know that our nation's debt and deficit problems are unsustainable.  We need to look no further than the European Union to understand the problems associated with welfare states run wild.  The violence in Greece is a harbinger of things to come in the United States if we fail to take action to get our nation's fiscal house in order.


It's as simple as 1, 2, 3.  No nation can spend its way out of a debt and deficit problem.  It is true, however, that a growing economy produces increases in tax revenue that can be used to eliminate deficits and pay down debt.  Unfortunately, while our economy was rapidly growing, members of Congress and our presidents including George W. Bush and Barack Obama increased spending at an even faster pace than revenue growth.  It was foolish; it made no sense; and it brought us to where we are today.

Unfortunately, President Obama doesn't think we have a problem:


Obama has now admitted that he doesn't want a balanced budget -- even eventually. He also doesn't think we should worry about the national debt because it's not an "immediate crisis". In fact, Obama thinks we're in a "sustainable place" -- his words, not mine.  This kind of ignorance will force the rest of us to pay economic hell, eventually.
 

Ignore everything this individual screamed at the top of his lungs in 2006 when another party was in the White House -- suddenly, he doesn't care about radically exploding debt, and doesn't think you should either. His economic maturity is like a child who refuses to take medicine for an illness because he isn't dying yet. It could kill us -- or at least the economy.


I wrote a book in which I addressed Obama's adolescent behavior hoping that we would elect a president with more common sense, but I overestimated typical voters in the U.S.  This is what I said about the president:


Childish behavior is something we don't want or need in our president, and Barack Obama has behaved childishly since the day he took office.  At home and abroad, he has disgraced himself and our country with his juvenile antics.  Unfortunately, he seems to be unaware of his problem, but leaders around the world are.  So are people in this country--everyone who isn't an Obamanista, that is.
 

I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, so I won't make any attempt to psychoanalyze the president.  I'll leave it to professionals to try and figure out the root cause of Obama's problem, but as a citizen of the United States, a taxpayer, and a person who cares deeply about the effects of our nation's policies on people in other countries, I think I have a duty and a responsibility to address the problems I see--problems that are readily apparent.  The issues we face as a nation and as a world are too important and the risks are too great to place them in the hands of a juvenile or a person who thinks and acts like one.


As things stand now, we have a president who fails to recognize economic reality, Democrats in both houses of Congress who go along with the president on everything, a Senate that is controlled by Democrats who make Obama look like a wise man, and a population that is addicted to entitlements.  That is a recipe for disaster.  Seth Mandel said that as long as Democrats control the Senate, things aren't likely to change:


But that brings us to the other way to balance the budget: the old-fashioned way, by simply spending responsibly. The challenge here is twofold: first, it does not have the enforcement mechanism the amendment would (hopefully) have. And second, the Senate is controlled by the Democrats and President Obama still has no plans to dramatically cut spending. Entitlement reform is necessary, but it's also easy to demagogue. As President Obama has made all too clear, if the Republicans want to reform entitlements, they have to control Congress and the White House; they won't have any help from Democrats who are always thinking about the next election.


Mandel is correct.  To deal with our fiscal crisis, we must elect Senators who understand that we are facing a crisis.  That means electing Republicans.  That's not a political statement because I'm not a Republican.  It's a factual statement that can't be refuted even by dimwits like Paul Krugman of the New York Times.  In the history of the world, no nation that routinely spends without regard for resources has survived.  It's foolish to think that the United States will be the exception.


I had hoped that after four years of dismal performance in office, Barack Obama would not be re-elected, but as I said, I didn't appreciate how ignorant voters in the U.S. are.  Judging by the 2012 presidential election, I am not overly optimistic about the odds of Republicans taking control of the Senate in 2014.  I'm not saying that it can't happen.  I'm just pointing out that it makes no sense to believe that it will happen.


Even if Republicans do take control of the Senate, maintain control of the House, and convince the president to act responsibly, we still face daunting challenges because people who are addicted to entitlements aren't likely to give them up without a fight, and by that I don't mean a political battle.  I'm referring to violence on the streets of cities and towns across America.  


I'm not a pessimist.  I'm a realist, and that's what I think is likely to happen.  As I said, we can look to Europe and see what takes place when entitlement addicts are forced to accept austerity measures.  If you think that it can't happen here, you need to think again.  If I am correct, we are on the verge of chaotic conditions in this country that could easily spiral out of control.


That's why I believe that now is the time to acquire precious metals, guns, and ammunition while we still can.  Think of it as buying insurance.  If what I fear will happen doesn't occur, then you will own assets that are likely to increase in value, and you can actually use the guns and ammunition as a form of recreation.  If what I fear will happen does take place, you will be in a position to buy the things you need and to defend your family.  In any event, at this moment in time, precious metals, guns, and ammunition look like good bets to me.

Progressivism's Equality Paradox Smothers Freedom

With the historical record of the last century and a half of political and social experimentation behind us, the fundamental question for Western civilization has come down to this: How free do people want to be?  Partially free or completely free?  Furthermore, is it even possible to be considered truly free if one is only partially free?  Democratically based societies around the globe need to decide which they value more -- liberal/Progressive equality or freedom.  There is no happy medium that will sustain both.  One need only observe the contention, the hyper-partisanship, and the social and economic decline of societies that have attempted to balance the two concepts to recognize that it is a fool's errand.


The concept of freedom used here means that each individual owns his or her own life (body and mind, including that which he produces with his body and mind) while existing in a condition in which voluntary courses of action can be chosen without physical compulsion, coercion, or interference from others. 


It is obvious that freedom is meaningless in a society without rights to protect it.  A right has, therefore, been defined as a moral principle defining and sanctioning a person's freedom in a social context.  Past Supreme Court justice George Sutherland stated it eloquently when he said, "The right to life, liberty and property are bound together to be essentially one right.  To give a man his life but to deny him his liberty is to take from him all that makes life worth living.  To give him liberty but to take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his liberty is to still leave him a slave."


Both freedom and rights are futile without the principle of equality of rights.  Though people possess a vast array of individual differences, all members of a free society should be treated equally in two respects: in the equality of their individual rights, and in their equality of treatment before the law.  Freedom cannot exist for those whose rights are subordinated to the rights or objectives of others.  Observing the equality of rights also means that any alleged "right" of one person, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right.  For example, no person can have the "right" to impose an un-chosen obligation, an unrewarded duty, or involuntary servitude on another person.  Armed with this understanding, we can begin to clear the fog of Progressivism and understand how its agenda of collectivism and redistribution is corrosive to freedom.


In order to be acceptable in a culture that valued individual liberty and self-reliance, Progressives realized that collectivism had to be cloaked in "the common good of society," and egalitarian redistribution disguised as "fairness" necessary to achieve "social justice."  Unconcealed, these objectives are offensive to a free society in which individuals follow their own values and preferences and are not bound to follow someone else's.  This principle is founded on the belief that adult individuals of sound mind are the ultimate judges of their own well-being and that their own views should be paramount in governing their actions.


The proponents of liberal/Progressive equality, on the other hand, want to govern the actions of others in order to organize society and its resources to achieve their specific objectives, which are often loosely defined as the "common good."  The writings of several renowned modern thinkers have pointed out that, in a free society, the common good can mean only the sum of the various goods of all of the individuals involved.  When the common good is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some takes precedence over the good of others.  A free society does not require the sacrifice of anyone's interests, be it to another powerful individual or even to a majority.  It leaves no possibility for any person to serve his or her interests by subordinating the interests of others. 


Herein is the Equality Paradox, the central contradiction of liberal/Progressive ideology.  Though the Progressive version of equality is presented to society as "fairness," it paradoxically requires unequal treatment by the force of government to subordinate the rights of some to the dictates of others in order to facilitate the latter's aims.  The objective rule of law is bent to accommodate preferential treatment of chosen groups who, in turn, reward their government benefactors with electoral support.


Once established, a "system" such as this eventually becomes the inverse of the one prescribed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.  A democratically based, constitutionally limited republic is replaced with statism, where authoritarian government mandates know few limitations and obedient citizens are cultivated through increasingly restricted freedom of action and a diminution in the protection of individual rights.  The consequence, which is lost on many good-intentioned people who support Progressive policies, is that it matters not if individual rights and freedom of choice are subordinated to the arbitrary whims of a monarch, a dictator, or to a government under the banner of societal good -- they are subordinated nonetheless.


Committed Progressives will often concede that the rights of some may be subordinated and freedoms abridged, but they defend this as necessary in the transformation into a fairer society.  Once the transformation is complete, they say, everyone will enjoy equality and live in a society where material needs will be met through cooperative effort guided by benevolent government action.  Their assertions demand an answer to these questions: Of all the societies that have attempted similar transformations, are there any examples where this has gone to successful completion?  Furthermore, does the modern Progressive welfare state represent such a completion?


Interestingly, social scientist and author Charles Murray has referred to the last century of experimentation with collectivism and egalitarianism as modern civilization's era of adolescence -- an era when parental advice, based on the practical lessons learned through life experiences, is discounted as irrelevant to the "modern times" in which the adolescent and his or her cohorts live.  Intellectual immaturity, hubris, naivety, and the youthful rebellious desire to be uninhibited by conventional standards eventually give way to an appreciation of the value of one's parents' timeless wisdom.


Will America mature in a parallel fashion through this Progressive-influenced phase of societal development and regain an appreciation for the timeless wisdom of her founding principles?  Or will America venture farther away from freedom and down the path toward liberal/Progressive equality?

King Arthur's Court and Emperor's Clothes

As a corporate budgeter, I learned decades ago that only a few people can look at an organization's money, corporation's money or someone else's money and spend it as if it were their own money -- i.e., very deliberately, based on the priorities and values of the organization.

One of my favorite memories from my time as a corporate planner occurred when an organization, which was not meeting budget, rented horses to ride on stage for an internal employee meeting. King Arthur lived again!

Aligning priorities and budgets has never been hard for me. Possibly it was my childhood experiences: wearing my sister's hand-me-downs from grade school until I became taller than her and starting my work life at age 13 cleaning bathrooms.

Possibly it was my college experiences: working at the switchboard (yes, we still had one where I went to school), working one or two jobs during the summer and cleaning my car (or my friend Suzanne's) to find enough change in the cushions to go to Fast Fare (the local drive-through restaurant).

As a planner, I spent other people's money as though it were mine. I constantly asked myself: How could it best be spent? Did the strategy and budget align?

This week, I conducted an unscientific economic experiment using my two children. We went to Chick-fil-A after school for a snack, which we do about once a week, and instead of paying for their food, I explained that we would split the cost.

Most times, the two of them finish the chicken sandwich and nuggets portion of the meal, but often leave half-eaten fries, drinks and shakes. As a child of the "clean-your-plate" generation, who still too often does just that (hence my use of salad plates for dinner; I'm thinking of moving to saucers), I did not want to require that they eat everything that they ordered, but I wanted them to have some skin in the game.

My son Robert decided to get a small order of fries instead of the medium, no drink and a small ice cream cone, as it was less expensive than the shake. My daughter Maggie decided to just get the chicken sandwich. She ate the entire chicken portion of the sandwich (which was the norm), but also the pickle and the bun. In order to get the most out of her money, she threatened to eat the wrapper, too, but thankfully decided she was full.

My unscientific conclusion: It's always easier to spend other people's money. After all, if the money belongs to someone else, then there are no real consequences to how it's spent. You don't have to determine if you really need a small order of fries or medium -- just get the medium. And go ahead and get the medium shake, too, just in case. When faced with choices that have consequences (you can spend either here or there), then one tends to allocate limited resources more efficiently.

Scarcity is the restraint that leads to allocations that reflect priorities.

If restraints are taken away, then real decisions can be avoided.

So I have a confession to make: I've changed my mind. Last Friday, I tweeted that Eric Bolling's and Sean Hannity's offer to pay for the White House tours was excellent. The government-funded tours were cancelled effective this past Saturday due to the sequestration, according to the White House website.

Robert and I toured the White House last month. We also toured the Capitol and the Supreme Court. My new perspective is that government is paid for by the American people (and corporations) and therefore the key government buildings should be open to the same people who pay for them to be operating in the first place.

While a private payer might allow the White House to stay open, doing so would artificially remove a constraint on how our (not the government's) money should best be spent.

Based on my experience in budgeting, I feel pretty sure that, somewhere in our federal government, horses are being rented for members of King Arthur's Court to ride upon -- if not literally, then figuratively. Before the government buildings are closed to the people who fund them, we should first round up all the theoretical horses and those who ride upon them.

We might just find out that the emperor who rides the horse has no clothes.

http://townhall.com/columnists/jackiegingrichcushman/2013/03/14/king-arthurs-court-and-emperors-clothes-n1532700/page/full/

Note to Union Teachers: If You Want to be Treated Like Professionals, Act Like It

I was deeply troubled when video surfaced last week of striking Strongsville, Ohio teachers heckling substitute teachers who were applying to be their temporary replacements.

Over 300 teachers are on strike because the school board is refusing to give them automatic raises, and the school board undercut their mass temper tantrum by hiring substitutes to keep schools open.

The substitutes, complete with police escorts, had to endure heckling and jeering by the strikers. The unionists often followed alongside the substitutes, berating them and yelling in their faces as they headed to the local police department for mandatory background checks.

The entire scene had that 1957 Little Rock/school integration “walk of shame” feel to it.

Ironically, one striker yelled at a black substitute, “Rosa Parks would be ashamed!” (See the video here.)
Perhaps, but her shame probably would have been aimed at the obnoxious striker.

It marked a bottom-of-the-barrel moment for me as a five-year education reform activist. Are these people on the picket lines steel workers or degreed professionals? The irony of the American Federation of Teachers’ slogan – “A Union of Professionals” – could not be more profound.

Sadly, many of today’s public school teachers have embraced a hard-core mentality and defiant attitude toward anyone who disagrees with their demands or tactics. They have the influence of their union leaders to blame for that.

The unions carefully arrange adversarial environments, pitting teachers against administrators. They constantly remind everyone that teacher “morale is low,” and complain that realistic salary offers from cash-strapped school boards are a sign that teachers aren’t “valued.”

That often leads to childish behavior, like having “votes of no-confidence” on a superintendent or school board, picketing outside board members’ homes and workplaces, or wearing all black clothing to school to display their displeasure.
 Grow up. Let the kids be the kids. You be the adults.

Sadly, unionized teachers throughout the nation have made sure the debate over public schools is centered on their desires rather than student needs. Does anyone really think the striking Strongsville teachers were yelling at the substitutes on behalf of the students?
 Collective bullying

But asking the adults to act like adults may be too much. The examples of teacher union pettiness and intimidation – dare I say bullying – are all too frequent.
 In 2012, in the midst of a fight with the Chicago Board of Education over a plan to close failing schools, Chicago Teachers Union Vice President Jesse Sharkey held a bullhorn in front of the TV cameras and declared his union would “expose” the billionaires pushing for school reform in the city, then told school board members, “We’re coming after you!”

Earlier that year, teachers in the Eagle Point, Oregon school district went on strike and heckled replacement teachers. The protesters did their best to disrupt classes by shouting from the nearby sidewalk.


In the fall of 2011, CTU President Karen Lewis gave a speech to a group of “social justice” teachers in which she mocked –in a bullying fashion – U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s lisp. She was forced to apologize.

That same year, members of the Michigan Education Association protested outside the insurance business of then-State Rep. Marty Knollenberg because he supported Gov. Rick Snyder’s education reform agenda.

Three months ago in Lansing, Michigan, a group of union members at the state capitol protesting Snyder’s “right to work” legislation violently tore down the tent of an organization that supports right-to-work, trapping some people inside.

At a California “Tax the Rich” protest, a teacher said she thought the home addresses of billionaires should be made public. She didn’t say why, but presumably it wasn’t to add them to her “holiday card” list.

Earlier this week in Strongsville, a teacher was arrested after allegedly swerving his vehicle at another vehicle filled with replacement teachers. Fliers were also passed out in the neighborhoods of replacement teachers, asking residents if they knew that a “scab” lived among them.

And let’s not forget the ugliest mass temper tantrum of all, which occurred in Madison, Wisconsin two years ago this month. Union protesters banged drums, issued death threats, tried to tip over buses full of legislative staffers and climbed through the state capitol windows, all in an effort to preserve union power.


We should be able to expect more

The late author and activist Saul Alinsky always insisted that the ends justify the means.

If protesting outside a board member’s house, and frightening his children in the process, means securing a bigger raise, then do it. If scoring better contract terms means tracking board members to their health clubs – to make them “feel the same stresses we have” – then what are you waiting for?

Ethics be damned; bring on the victory. Decency is for suckers.

The sick part is that our nation’s largest teachers unions have been embracing Alinsky and his temper-tantrum approach for years.

The National Education Association has Alinsky’s books on its “recommended reading” page. Union groups teach his tactics and put them into practice virtually every day.

The tactics are frequently effective, but they don’t impress anyone. Do union leaders ever worry about public relations? Do they realize that their tactics often leave taxpayers and parents shaking their heads in disgust? Do they really think making public fools of themselves will strengthen the labor movement in the long-term?
But somehow that type of logical thinking never occurs to them. Like a spoiled child in a grocery store, they throw themselves on the floor and kick and scream until their humiliated parents buy the candy bar. Mission accomplished. That’s all that matters.

But pride should come into play at some point. Why would self-described “professionals” conduct themselves in such an unprofessional manner? And what are their actions teaching their students?
The situation is undoubtedly worsened by school boards across the nation that routinely give in to the labor tantrums. That means the unions can be counted on to apply the same tactics when their new contracts expire.

I’m the parent of three young children. Like many parents, I know that rewarding a child’s temper tantrum or other bad behavior is sending a very bad message. The worst thing anyone can do is reward the behavior. It’s reinforcing the idea that continued application of the obnoxious behavior will lead to the desired outcome for the child.

This isn’t some complicated psychological study – it’s common sense.

Maybe I am expecting too much from the union “professionals” who are contracted to deliver services in our schools. After all, they organize themselves in industrial-style unions, just like blue-collar workers. The irony is that many blue-collar union workers conduct themselves with more dignity, even when they’re on strike.

But I still can’t shake the nagging feeling that we, as taxpayers, should be able to expect something more from people who earn their living from tax dollars and have so much influence over our children every day.

http://townhall.com/columnists/kyleolson/2013/03/14/note-to-union-teachers-if-you-want-to-be-treated-like-professionals-act-like-it-n1532838/page/full/
 
Links of interest:

No comments: