Union Busting
by: The Patriot

It seems that bashing unions at the expense of union workers has become popular and the sport of politicians everywhere, all under the guise of ’saving taxpayer dollars.’ Yet if it’s truly about saving tax dollars and not merely strong arming union members and taking away their right to collective bargaining, then why hasn’t one politician at the federal, state, county or city level brought up the subject of reducing the salaries, benefits and pensions of all the politicians and appointed high level govt. positions? Some of these same Government leaders greatly contributed to the fiscal collapse we’re all facing, yet lazy and irresponsible voters have rewarded them by keeping them in office.

So what does a Governor, Congressman, Senator or State Senator, HUD Secretary, State Attorney General, District Atty, Tax Collector, Comptroller, Treasury Secretary, Judge, Obama Czar, Education Secretary, City Councilman, Sheriff or Property Appraiser earn, and how much of their pre-agreed upon wages and benefits are we going to be taking from each of them? What about the support staffs of the upper level politicians or how about the Dog Catcher, School Superintendant or Principals and others on taxpayer payrolls – how much do they make? And please tell me what justifies giving a Senator a pension for life after 4 years in office? Pensions which often include free medical care for life! And why are these pensions then passed onto their spouses upon the politicians deaths?

Also, no one has mentioned anything about going after the ‘non-union’ govt. salaries, benefits and pensions – which are very often based on what the union members have negotiated – and sometimes it’s even more – especially when they get to vote for their own raises. Attacking union bosses I suppose I can understand, because some of them act like gangsters on par with the crooked and inept politicians they’ve used union member dues to purchase. But attacking unions as it is being done is mostly hurting the union members and their families who are just trying to get by like everybody else. So if it’s really about saving taxpayer dollars and not merely a veiled attempt at busting unions for big businesses, then let’s go after all of these other groups mentioned here so we can really save taxpayer dollars – and since they’re so vocal on the idea of saving taxpayer money, let’s begin with the wealthy politicians bent on harming union families by cutting away at their negotiated paychecks, pensions and benefits.

Mr. Duncan’s professional life started playing Ivy League basketball, you know – he endeavored to be a super privileged jock but ended up in education when he (I think) injured himself, says a lot about his ability to prioritize responsibly. Privileged jock dreams transferred into political administration and all.

A co-worker pointed out the bright side to the man’s career – at least he did manage one of the top three largest school districts in the nation… but now that he’s gone, what’s really changed? And what’s he going to do with the nation’s education? Yay for more out of touch Ivy Leaguers running our country into the dirt.

http://www.examiner.com/x-3865-Chicago-Public-Education-Examiner~y2009m8d30-Chicago-Arne-Duncan-presided-over-a-schools-grade-changing-scandal

Duncan is a Ponzi-class con man. In light of the bubbling scandal in Chicago Public Schools I have to give U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, more credit for his Machiavellian life story than I have. Unlike his basketball buddy, President Obama, who grimaces and honestly tells you to your face that he is going to blow up your country and rebuild it with a broken chainsaw. Duncan misleads, manipulates, and lies through his oversized Colgate smile, uttering educations generalities that any novice PTA president can produce. What else can you conclude after months of revisionist reports have come out refuting, denying, and negating the phony school reform that catapulted this sociology major into the White House as an ‘education expert?’ He never taught school, and you cannot get a principal’s certificate in Illinois without teaching a minimum of two years; so he has never run a school. But Mayor Richard Daley can anoint you anything he likes, and he will in order to destroy bad schools for Negroes and wipe out good schools for Hispanics to replace them with bad schools for everyone except the prodigal sons returning from self-imposed, ‘white flight’ exile in the suburbs. That way he makes room for repatriated middle-class families that can afford to pay the additional taxes he will have to impose to bring in the 2016 Summer Olympics, and also takes care of his real-estate cronies at the same time. True efficiency in urban evil.

I confess that I’ve been sardonically amused by the fairy tale ascendancy of Duncan, and admit to marveling (a euphemism for jealousy) at his good fortune in choosing the right parents and making the best of growing up in proximity to poor black children like John Rodgers who also chose his parents wisely. Rogers is the African-American founder of a successful money management firm who hired his boyhood buddy, Arne, to run his company’s education outreach organization. John’s father was a judge, and his mother, the late Jewel Lafontant, was a civil rights crusader and an U.S. Ambassador. Perhaps one day I will tell you the story about the time John called me when we were both struggling young stockbrokers, he for William Blair and myself at Merrill Lynch. But that’s another story.

Anyway, my humorless amusement with Duncan ended today after I read the Sun-Times story written by Rosalind Rossi and Art Golab on: CHICAGO TEACHERS PRESSURED TO CHANGE GRADES. The headline was so innocuously pedestrian I almost didn’t read it. When I did, it blew me away. The Sun-Times and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) conducted a joint survey this summer of 1200 teachers. For those of you who have neither been waterboarded nor forced to play with statistics, 500 is a large enough number for a statistically reliable random survey. The outcome of this ostensibly innocent exercise was the horrid revelation that one third of the teachers surveyed said they were pressured to change grades in the last year.

That’s a lot. In the five years I taught before going over to the dark side and becoming a principal, I changed one grade. The principal of Kennedy High School on Chicago’s southwest side rushed into my classroom after final grades were submitted and politely requested (euphemism for pleading like an indicted alderman) I change the failing grade of a graduating senior who’d attempted suicide the night before. I didn’t much like the girl but she did me a semester-long favor by constantly cutting my class, and she didn’t need the history credit. She was going to graduate anyway, so I returned the favor. Grade changing is a rare rabbit. Or was then.

Even if the CTU/Sun-Times study is wrong by half, the incidence of grade changing is pandemic. Sure, Simeon High changed Derrick Rose’s grade so he could win a national championship with Memphis State, who are we kidding? How many CPS teachers have the NBA’s rookie of the year sitting in their classroom? Must be a lot more than I thought. Worse (worst?), dozens of those queried report that grades were changed without their approval. That means they didn’t get paid, bummer, but it also means they won’t be subpoenaed .

Rossi and Golab wrote: Teachers reported pressure from principals, ’upset’ (euphemism for wild, crazy, and frightening) parents and even other CPS employees who were parents of their students. They said the squeeze was put on them to pass failing students, to give ill students a break or to help athletes. Some felt prodded to goose up grades to help kids graduate, avoid summer school or get into an elite high school (uh ho!). Such heat was twice as common among teachers in high schools, where the push is on to reduce failure rates. (Duncan reform scam at work) One teacher said her school lowered its grading scale and ’still we are pressured to change grades.’

Look, we are all adults here. Nothing in this materialistic, shallow American society that just happens to be the best place to live on the planet is even close to perfect. After all, this is Chicago where federal prosecutors feed of the dead weight in our city council and this is also the state that sends every other governor to prison. In a town with the likes of Rob Blagojevich, Jesse Jackson, Todd the Stroger, and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, you gotta expect a grade or two to slip by the Integrity Police. But Chicagoans, we have to draw the line somewhere.

‘It’s in the culture of the schools,’ wrote one experienced high school teacher who raised numerous grades under pressure. You can’t completely be honest in grading students; otherwise the failure rate would be off the chart.’ (If you think that is an alarming quotation, fasten your seat belt and read the next one.) ‘While I am not crazy about it, I am sure it is necessary for a host of reasons,’ wrote another teacher. ‘As the grade coordinator at the school, I am the one that has to actually make the changes.’ (Poor baby, your subpoena is in the mail)

In true Chicago style, the president of the Chicago Principals Association, Clarice Berry, responded, ‘I can imagine teachers would feel pressure. Principals feel pressure. If you call any other city and any other state, you’ll hear the same thing.’ (Translation from unicorn-speak to straight-talk: Everybody’s doing it; you got a problem with that?) In true California speak, the president of the Chicago Teachers Union, Marilyn Stewart, said, ’It’s absolutely a ripple effect,’ Stewart said in response to the Sun-Times CTU survey on grade-changing. ’It causes more work for the next teacher.’ Uh, how about it’s dishonest, immoral, and wrong Ms. Stewart? CPS isn’t Enron or AIG, or Lehman Brothers where we pay people to lie, cheat, and steal; these are kids. They‘re in school, not Congress! But what can you expect from an institution that threw school prayer under the bus and replaced it with Hanna Dakota?

Mayor Daley has been in total control of schools for a decade and a half now, and Arne Duncan was his bagman for half of that time. Duncan either tolerated this practice or knew nothing of it. So he is either corrupt enough to look the other way or too inexperienced to know it was going on during his watch. Regardless of which answer is the most correct, either answer disqualifies him to tell anyone how to run their school systems. Apparently, the Duncan-Daley duo sat on top of a cesspool of CPS lies and intimidation whose contents are slowly oozing out under the federal light of magnet school indictments, inspector general investigations, and now corruption-inspired surveys. I hadn’t previously tossed in the University of Illinois admissions debacle downstate because I haven’t seen a direct connection between my alma mater and CPS, but if I weren’t writing this from Baghdad, I bet I could find one.

Oh, I almost forgot the public service announcement. Unindicted schools CEO, Ron Huberman, another Daley crony who has never taught school a day in his life, suggested teachers call the Chicago Schools inspector General at (773) 534-9400 or the I.G.’s anonymous hotline at: (773) 48-FRAUD. Really.