The Conservative Soldier

The very existence of teachers’ unions makes my blood boil. But I approach the breaking point when a union operative calls for sweeping measures and more spending because, after all, it’s “for the children”.

Are their demands for perpetual pay raises for the children? How about the medical benefits, which are the envy of countless other professions? How about the crushing pension obligations? Are those for the kids?

The president of the American Federation of Teachers took up one third of the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion page Thursday morning pleading for a $23 billion federal bailout of the nation’s schools. Care to venture a guess as to her rationale?

When teachers begin losing jobs in cash- and revenue-strapped districts (joining some who’ve already been terminated), writes Randi Weingarten, the resulting trend “could rob an entire generation of students of the well-rounded education they need and deserve.”

And so goes the eternal argument from the entitlement addicted education community, voiced by its unions: If we fail to continue to throw money at public school systems, gushers of cash born of rising property taxes and other taxes, then we forsake our children and imperil our nation’s future.

“The federal government didn’t let Wall Street fail,” Weingarten observes. “Why would we do less for our public schools, which undeniably are too important to fail?”

She’s right about the schools, so let’s cut to the chase about who deserves what in this scenario. If there must be a bail out, the place to drill for crude is not the federal government, which is obviously tapped dry. Let the bail out be orchestrated by the caring teachers and school administrators, the ones who are deeply troubled that our kids won’t get what they deserve. Weingarten’s formula conveniently overlooks the fact that unions are sitting on mountains of pension funds and discretionary lobbying cash, accumulated across years of two-handed grabbing of taxpayer dollars.

As noted by Townhall magazine in an April piece entitled, “Everything But Education”, the National Education Association, the nation’s oldest and largest teachers’ union, “ranked as the nation’s single-biggest contributor to state-level and federal campaigns, political parties and ballot measures between 2007 and 2008, spending more than $56 million.” This is more than the combined contributions of a behemoth holy troika of labor unions — the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters and SEIU (Service Employees International Union).

Considering that there are teachers’ unions in which individuals have embezzled more money than some school boards would need to return to educational solvency and save jobs, it is the height of disingenuous logic to decry the financial crisis in public education without offering to stop it with these treasure troves of union funds.

Meanwhile, don’t think for a minute that school districts have truly considered “cutting into the bone”, as Weingarten contends in the Journal. A March 2010 study published by the Cato Institute found that public schools are spending 93 percent more than the estimated median private school in the five largest metro areas and Washington, D.C.

Writes Cato’s Adam Schaeffer, “Since runaway education spending is a major cause of current and future budget problems, it is the best place to look in state and local budgets for serious savings.”

Teachers discover early in their careers that it’s almost always a mistake to underestimate the children, both in terms of learning potential and b.s. detection.

The time has come for teachers’ unions, administrators, educators and school boards to cease underestimating the taxpaying public and its enormous capacity to see through the myths unions attempt to perpetuate as they dig deeper for our last dollars.

Reduce public school spending and de-fang the bloated unions. Then we can have an honest discussion about who really cares about the children.

Jonathan Quick has come to a patriotic crossroads. He is a National Hockey League goalkeeper and a member of the 2010 U.S. Olympic men’s ice hockey team. He loves America and the people who defend her.

The International Olympic Committee will contend that the American Eagle decal bearing the phrase, “Support Our Troops”, on Quick’s helmet violates an Olympic Games ban on political propaganda and “advertising”.

VANCOUVER (Reuters) - U.S. netminder Jonathan Quick will be ordered to remove the slogan ‘Support Our Troops’ from his helmet for contravening Olympic rules on political propaganda, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) said on Monday.

Quick needs to make a decision. Quickly. Defy the IOC and his sport’s international federation and sit out the Games in Vancouver in defense of his support for American troops (certainly a courageous option). Or, remove the handsome decal, which certainly does not come even close to being “propaganda” or “advertising”.

Conversely, Olympic athletes are permitted to adorn uniforms and headgear with their nation’s flags — flags that are, in some cases, specifically designed to promote religious and political ideals.

The design at the center of Iran’s flag is symbolic of the phrase, “There is no god but Allah.” (Four Iranian athletes are competing in Vancouver).

The Scandinavian cross that dominates Norway’s flag represents Christianity.

These are but two examples. If it is acceptable to “advertise” two divergent religious viewpoints by wearing a flag logo on a uniform, or raising a flag above an Olympic Village, why is it unacceptable to support a military dedicated to advancing and preserving democracy, and saving innocent lives, around the world?

Either decision by Quick will be understandable. He would honor American troops by leaving the Games. He also honors his country by representing the USA as an Olympian.

But only one decision will elevate Quick to American hero. I’m certain no one need advise him which decision that is.

Chicago Tribune political columnist Clarence Page is mentally wandering, even all these months later, through Grant Park on election night 2008. In Page’s mind’s eye, people are still weeping and trembling as Barack Hussein Obama speaks. What else explains why racist remarks in 2010 are OK when they come from the left?

I was not surprised when MSNBC host Chris Matthews mused on air right after President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address that ‘I forgot he was black.’ After all, I’ve known Chris for years and I often forget that he’s white.

Just kidding. Let’s lighten up, please. Matthews meant no offense. He was caught up in the moment, he told me Thursday, with his excitement at how much the nation’s first black president has ‘taken us beyond black and white in our politics, wonderfully so, in just a year.’

Help me out here, Clarence. Why is it so exciting to see a Socialist president leading us from “black and white” to red, as in the U.S. budget deficit and Obama’s ideological leanings?

In his haste to defend fellow liberal media elites and coat them in post-racial Teflon, Page tosses in a tip of the cap to conservative Rush Limbaugh, writing that he “defended” Limbaugh when his radio show broadcast a lyrical satire in 2007. The piece was entitled, “Barack the Magic Negro”. What Page does not say was that he had no choice but to defend the satire on Limbaugh’s show because the concept did not originate with Limbaugh. The observation that Barack Hussein Obama was emerging as a political “magic negro” was delivered in print in March 2007 by black Los Angeles Times columnist David Ehrenstein, who had written several pieces opining whether Obama was black enough to be heralded as this historic Presidential messiah.

Not only are Ehrenstein and Page like-minded, they are employed by the same company. Tribune Co. owns both the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. So how would Page NOT give Limbaugh a pass for turning the Times piece into satirical lyric sung by a comedian impersonating Al Sharpton? Page fails to mention any of this, of course.

Page insists he believes MSNBC’s Matthews should be spared backlash after saying “I forgot he was black”. Radical liberals always stick together. Page’s Sunday column did not make me forget. No, it reminded me he is an irrelevant pundit in a dying medium who will be carrying Obama’s water long after all of the magic has worn off.