Too bad the intelligent seem to carry less and less influence.

The fantasy world of the unintelligent.

"Those who retreat into fantasy cannot be engaged in rational discussion, for fantasy is all that is left of their tattered self-esteem. When their myths are attacked as untrue it triggers not a discussion of facts and evidence but a ferocious emotional backlash." ---Chris Hedges, Truthdig

Do we like teachers again, now that they're dying?

It would be a start...

When you can argue rationally about gun control...

Too many are still blaming the teacher

Speaking of teachers...

Who's at fault for our current state of affairs

Merit pay for teachers

All Street Bankers vs. teachers

What do teachers make?

A fair commentary on education in the U.S.

From the New York Times. Read more by clicking on the link.

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
March 13, 2011

From the debates in Wisconsin and elsewhere about public sector unions, you might get the impression that we’re going bust because teachers are overpaid.

That’s a pernicious fallacy. A basic educational challenge is not that teachers are raking it in, but that they are underpaid. If we want to compete with other countries, and chip away at poverty across America, then we need to pay teachers more so as to attract better people into the profession.

Until a few decades ago, employment discrimination perversely strengthened our teaching force. Brilliant women became elementary school teachers, because better jobs weren’t open to them. It was profoundly unfair, but the discrimination did benefit America’s children.

These days, brilliant women become surgeons and investment bankers — and 47 percent of America’s kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers come from the bottom one-third of their college classes (as measured by SAT scores). The figure is from a study by McKinsey & Company, “Closing the Talent Gap.”

Changes in relative pay have reinforced the problem. In 1970, in New York City, a newly minted teacher at a public school earned about $2,000 less in salary than a starting lawyer at a prominent law firm. These days the lawyer takes home, including bonus, $115,000 more than the teacher, the McKinsey study found.

Punishing public workers in Wiconsin

The amount of hate that Republicans have toward public workers simply doesn't seem rational.  If I worked as a teacher in Wisconsin, I'd be looking for a new job.  I don't stay where I'm not wanted.


The following is from the Mother Jones Blog - click on the link to read more.

On Wednesday night, Republicans in Wisconsin's state senate rammed through a retooled version of Governor Scott Walker's controversial "budget repair bill" with the 14 senate Democrats still in hiding in Illinois. The senate bill eliminates collective bargaining rights for most public-sector unions, a provision that has labor leaders and protesters up in arms. But there's another explosive provision in the bill that's received little attention: The bill authorizes state officials to fire any state employee who joins a strike, walk-out, sit-in, or coordinated effort to call in sick.

According to an analysis (PDF) of the Senate bill by Wisconsin's Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB), the legislation gives state officials the power to fire workers during a "state of emergency" declared by the governor under several conditions. If a state employee misses three working days without an approved leave of absence, that's grounds for being fired. State workers can also be dumped if, according to the LFB's analysis, they participate in a "strike, work stoppage, sit-down, stay-in, slowdown, or other concerted activities to interrupt the operations or services of state government, including mass resignations or sick calls."

THIS warms the cockles of my heart...

I love it when a plan comes together, and here a bunch of good people are joining in solidarity to fight the insanity of the Republicans in Wisconsin.  From Crooks and Liars.

Wisconsin workers are marching on the capital today to protest Governor Scott Walker's effort to crush their bargaining rights through the back door. Their newest ally? The Green Bay Packers, past and present, who signed a letter in support of the workers.

The statement reads:

"We know that it is teamwork on and off the field that makes the Packers and Wisconsin great. As a publicly owned team we wouldn't have been able to win the Super Bowl without the support of our fans.

"It is the same dedication of our public workers every day that makes Wisconsin run. They are the teachers, nurses and child care workers who take care of us and our families. But now in an unprecedented political attack Governor Walker is trying to take away their right to have a voice and bargain at work.

"The right to negotiate wages and benefits is a fundamental underpinning of our middle class. When workers join together it serves as a check on corporate power and helps ALL workers by raising community standards. Wisconsin's long standing tradition of allowing public sector workers to have a voice on the job has worked for the state since the 1930s. It has created greater consistency in the relationship between labor and management and a shared approach to public work.

"These public workers are Wisconsin's champions every single day and we urge the Governor and the State Legislature to not take away their rights."

Excuse me while I go pull our cheeseheads out of the garage and wear them in solidarity with the Packers and the Wisconsin workers.

Update: Wisconsin police and firefighers have joined the protest in solidarity, despite being exempt under Walker's proposal. Also, 400 students walked out of class today to protest suppression of their teachers' bargaining rights. Private sector unions have also offered support.

Republicans declare war on the middle class

I mentioned in an earlier post that Republicans, instead of getting money to run government by raising taxes on those who can afford it, want to take it by punishing the poors.  Literally - if they can destroy the dignity and the rights of the middle class, they can continue to build their wealth by forcing workers to become poor so that they will work dirt cheap.  The following is from the AFL-CIO website.

Wisconsin’s Walker Calls for End of Collective Bargaining, Alerts National Guard   by Mike Hall, Feb 11, 2011

First Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) announced a state budget plan that  strips state workers of nearly all their collective bargaining rights, cuts pay and benefits and says there will be no negotiations.

Today he took it even further: He announced he has alerted the National Guard to be ready in case state workers strike or rise in protest. He told the Associated Press he’s been working on contingency plans for months.

The last time the National Guard was used against public workers was the Memphis sanitation strike in 1968, just before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s  assassination.  The last time the Guard was called out in Wisconsin to quell a labor dispute was the 1934 Kohler strike by the UAW.

Walker may be suffering from a bit of right wing paranoia about unions. Today when he dropped the National Guard bombshell, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported:
The Capitol news conference where Walker announced his plan had unusually high security, with four Capitol police offers stationed outside of it and checking on who was attending the event.

What a way to conduct the state’s business!

A View of Teachers' Unions

Have you ever seen this, or something like it?

Rules for teachers in 1915


1. You will not marry during the term of your contract.

2. You are not to keep company with men.

3. You must be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless attending a school function.

4. You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores.

5. You may not travel beyond city limits unless you have the permission of the chairman of the board.

6. You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless he is your father or brother.

7. You may not smoke cigarettes.

8. You may not dress in bright colors.

9. You may under no circumstances dye your hair.

10. You must wear at least two petticoats.

11. Your dresses must not be any shorter than two inches above the ankle.

12. To keep the school room neat and clean, you must:

* sweep the floor at least once daily
* scrub the floor at least once a week with hot, soapy water
* clean the blackboards at least once a day
* start the fire at 7 a.m. so the room will be warm by 8 a.m.

For a long time in this country, teachers were second class citizens. My father was a teacher in the 1950's and many is the time he told (retold) the story of getting a contract. One year it was HIS turn to negotiate with the Superintendent, so, along with 2 or 3 other teachers, he scheduled a meeting. They walked in and explained (in 5 minutes or less) why they felt they needed a raise. The Superintendent then told them what provisions the district had made for a raise the following year and negotiations were over.

Teacher unions came along because of scores of years of abuses heaped upon the hard working men and women in the profession. When folks bitch about teachers' unions these days, don't forget, it was a narrow minded, disrespectful approach to the members of that profession that brought on the unions to begin with.

And it ain't over. I picked up the following from the J-Walk Blog...

In Texas: Teacher terminated over marriage.

A teacher at a Catholic high school got married, and then she got fired.

The reason for her termination turns on a theological tenet. According to Catholic doctrine, participants in a marriage must be an unmarried man and an unmarried woman. LaFortune told the principal that her fiance had been divorced - a proceeding not recognized by the Catholic Church.

The deacon was concerned with whether the first marriage of LaFortune's fiance, Benjamin Stakes, had been declared invalid by a Catholic tribunal and thereby annulled. His concern, however, did not sit well with LaFortune, who refused to resign from her job or seek an annulment - a process that could reach to Rome and take more than a year.

According to Deacon Patrick Cunningham:

his stance wasn't a personal attack, but rather a reflection of God's laws, which are non-negotiable.

And this:

At one point, the school president asked LaFortune if she went to church every Sunday. She told him she did not. "No wonder you don't understand," Pontolillo said. "You are not churched."

Meanwhile, hundreds of pedophile priests remain on the job...