Listen to the aforementioned meaningless tripe screamed out by a militant teacher in Wisconsin.
This clearly is the beginning of a major battle in the United States and I predict it’ll spread to Canada. Sadly, I predict that up here most all governments will cave in and give the unions whatever they want.
It is exactly the same rhetoric we get out here from the B.C. Teacher’s Fed. I will grant the teacher’s one point and that is the kind of guff they have to put up with some of their pupils, but then they were all for this open learning concept when discipline began to fall apart. The cameras enter the classroom on assignment and you see the pupils in coats and hats, slouched in their desks and all talking at once, but .. and this is important, they back the teachers, who have told them they have a voice. Not until such time as they start paying taxes, do they have a voice. Then again the NDP is thinking of allowing 13 year olds to cast votes at their leadership conventions.
We’re broke! The public employee union’s solution: spend more money.
Down here in Mordor, er Illinois we’re even more broke. Note to self: stock up on food and ammo…
BTW: I come from a family full of teachers. They believe they’re underpaid and overworked. Please, you work 8 months out of the year.
Not in Saskatchewan, Robert! We’re kicking the unions to the curb! Granted, we could be doing it faster. We started with essential service legislation, and now we’re shrinking our public service. Lowering salaries and stripping entitlements are next!
To paraphrase an old expression. “Doing this for the kids is like drinking to sobriety.”
Simon, you’re being overly optomistic.
These creatures are like zombies. They just don’t die!
The White House is organizing protests against State governments – and that’s not even the story being told by the media!
It’s all about the poor $100,000-a-year teachers losing(a portion) of their collective bargaining ‘rights’ and some pittance that they’ll have to contribute to their own fat pensions. It’s astounding, yet the Washington Post reports it as just a part of the story no more important than any other, un-frickin-believable.
If the PMO organized protests against provincial governments the media here would be apopleptic, if Bush had done it the leftist US media would still be reminding the public every day, but Obama does it.
The education system from kindergarten to post-grad must be privatized.
Give them what they want . . . thousands of layoffs.
It means the younger teachers will take the bullet for the older teacher’s with seniority.
The layoff notices will shut them up.
Or maybe they really are too stupid to understand no money means no job.
If only Harper had the balls
1981 Reagan fires air traffic controllers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5JSToyiyr8&feature=related
Robert, I think this time is different. This time its unions trying to hold back the tide of a newly elected Tea Party class of 2010, who ran on this precise platform. Cut spending, cut costs, cut government generally was the promise, and Republicans won by a landslide in these states. In Wisconsin it wasn’t even close.
So now, we have the reaction. The DemocRat brontosaurus finally got the message from its @$$ to its tiny tiny little brain, whipped out the playbook, and went with Thug 101.
The part I like the best is, this reaction is pure astroturf, bought and paid for in cash. Cash going to run out soon. ~:)
Time to reboot the education system and the simplest way would be to start by firing all the teachers. I’ve never had much respect for teachers as school was one of the greatest obstacles to my education. If I was into victimology I’d blame it all on the elementary school teacher who opposed my skipping 2 grades because I was “too immature” (just questioned everything she said and never accepted anything until I verified it myself).
One of the things I learned in high school was that most subjects at the high school level could be mastered in 1/10 or less of the time allotted. It didn’t take me long to figure out that school was just an elaborate daycare system for kids and I didn’t realize until later that I was so lucky to be in Alberta where the provincial exams were 100% of the final marks and the negative opinions of my teachers counted for 0%.
The only thing that students need to be taught is reading, writing, elementary mathematics and how to learn. Then just turn them loose in a library. So, in a sense I was home-schooled because I’d enjoy reading calculus books at home during my junior high summer holidays.
I’ve never gotten over my dislike of teachers as, what became very quickly apparent, was that most of them had very little depth of knowledge about the subject they were teaching. They were essentially glorified babysitters and what went on in class was a waste of my time.
So, fire them all and start a much leaner school system that teaches kids to learn on their own and think critically. Won’t happen though as the last thing that statists want is people who actually think for themselves.
@Loki: the radicals lexically hijacked the common sense notion of “critical thinking” education long ago in the form of “critical theory”. See your local university for real life examples.
Simon, the wife of a very good friend of mine in Saskatoon works in the health care area there. About a year ago they were out here and she was complaining about how 3 out of 10 people on her staff were being cut. This had something to do with budgets tied to Potash sales, I believe – you’d know more about this than me.
Anyhow, I told her that while of course I was sympathetic to anyone losing their job, I added that if the money wasn’t there then how could the government keep on borrowing it in perpetuity? I got back a blank look like you wouldn’t believe.
I am someone who has worked in the private sector all of his life. Later this year a multi-year contract of mine will be over and I’ll have to find something new. There are no guarantees in my professional life and I truly am baffled by the entitlement mentality of those in the public sector who have convinced themselves that theirs should be guaranteed for life.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
YEATS
So greedy unions/teachers should campaign for undeserved privileges so “the children” can be as greedy and as shiftless as they are one day?
“The children” are little better than human shields in this. Perhaps that is an extreme statement but is more or less extreme than people fleeing the jurisdiction rather than stay and hash out the problems before them? Won’t someone think of the children who will have to make up the time they’ve lost now during their summer holidays? Won’t someone think of how money could be better spent educating and providing necessary materials for “the children”?
No. I guess that’s too much to ask.
They ARE doing it for the kids…. themselves.
Somebody vanished my Ann Coulter books, but this is a nice short summery of her chapter on the education system in Godless:
http://www.academia.org/ann-coulter-on-education/
The end game is in sight. It will be us or them very soon.
Meaning, an electoral choice between status quo leading to financial oblivion, or radical change designed to prune the public sector by 25 to 50 per cent. Numbers, wages, entitlements, the whole she-bang has got to be pruned.
Otherwise we are all screwed, even the pigs lined up at the trough, because if the trough runs dry it doesn’t really matter much what you “won” in collective bargaining. And before that happens, all the wards of the state will be coming for you as the fattest, slowest targets they can spot.
The only question for me is, when is Harper going to realize there is nothing to stop him from being a conservative now. Nothing but fear of success.
Here’s a most interesting document about how to take control of a school board. Yet more evidence of why education costs are out of control. The entire system is rigged.
State of the union address when speaking to the children of the country said the most helpful thing you can do for your country is be a teacher. Foreshadowing, certainly.
Most teachers I know have little or no life experience(the exception is generally the Industrial Arts teachers). Going from high school directly to university, then back to high school.
Americas problems are their own. We NEED to get Harper his majority this time. Quebec can kiss my ass.
Here in Ontario we have a counter-revolution by the LIBRANOs.
Following their resounding defeat at the hands of Harris “Common Sense Revolution” the failed Librano candidates all swarmed to ther school boards…politicizing the school boards as a means to interdict Harris policies. Harris pulled an end run by removing bargaining power from the school boards and ending their power to set the education mill rate and placing those functions with the Ministry of Education. The LIBRANO dominated school boards then engaged in deficit spending….requiring the Ministry to appoint administrators. It was nasty business.
When the next election arrived the LIBRANOs were financed and abetted by the teachers unions….leaving the province in the hands of the teachers unions and the education system in the hands of the LIBRANOs. Both entitys have the backing/services of the MSM.
.Fire. .Them. .All.
RE Canada, I am pessimistic; provincial govs will cave to big unions. Consider Bill Black’s ongoing public relations battle with big unions and NS’s NDP over public pensions.
http://newstartns.ca/2011/02/pension-crisis-continued/
It never ceases to amaze me how the ones who are too lazy to wipe their hind-end are always the first to arrive at the protest.
This is interesting . . . no wonder Obama has his Organizing for America goons going full out to support this. Closed shop public sector workers are so beloved by unions . . . no organizing costs, all the dues are windfall profits.
“Mr. Walker would require that public-employee unions be recertified annually by a majority vote of all their members, not merely by a majority of those that choose to cast ballots. In addition, he would end the government’s practice of automatically deducting union dues from employee paychecks. For Wisconsin teachers, union dues total between $700 and $1,000 a year.
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Protesters fill the rotunda at the State Capitol building in Madison, Wisc., Feb. 16.
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Slideshow: Teachers Revolt
Public employee protests spread across the Midwest.
“Ending dues deductions breaks the political cycle in which government collects dues, gives them to the unions, who then use the dues to back their favorite candidates and also lobby for bigger government and more pay and benefits,” Mr. Siegel told me. After New York City’s Transport Workers Union lost the right to automatic dues collection in 2007 following an illegal strike, its income fell by more than 35% as many members stopped ponying up. New York City ended the dues collection ban after 18 months.”
http://tinyurl.com/4lp47qy
“We’re broke! The public employee union’s solution: spend more money.”
The only way I can make sense of the unions’ and the Democrats’ behaviour, is this: they refuse to accept the first part of your statement. They cannot and will not do the simple math that unequivocally proves the United States is on a path to fiscal ruin and economic collapse, and that those endpoints are rapidly approaching. They simply plug their ears and scream, “YOU BIG MEANIE, YOU CAN’T CUT SPENDING, YOU’LL HURT PEOPLE!” whenever confronted with it. They want their goodies, and that’s the end of it. They’re mewling babies unfit for public office, or even to be allowed to *vote*.
Sadly there aren’t enough steel-spined Republicans out there to reverse the damage, especially at the federal level. I don’t know exactly how long it will take, but I truly fear an American collapse is inevitable, and the consequences for the entire world may well be disastrous.
I lost touch with a friend of mine for a couple of years, well apparently he landed a nice fat Federal Job in Ottawa he was here for some training so he called me. He lamented on how Harper was going after snivel servants and taking away vital perks. What was that vital perk??? LOL free parking, hence forth he had to pay a fee to park in the parking lot. I laughed so hard I almost peed myself, I don’t think I’ll be hearing from him anytime soon thou.
The education system from kindergarten to post-grad must be privatized.
Posted by: Philanthropist at February 18, 2011 10:55 PM”
gee phil, you must not have gone thru an education system in your lifetime because I have it on good authority that when education was ALL privatized, it was once again a way for the privileged elites to keep the ‘rabble’ from ever getting so much as a toe hold on their future.
Stay in the ^%$#$* classroom and teach if you’re “for the kids”.
My sister is a teacher. She wanted me to vote for McGuinty Liberals wayyyyy back when the teachers were after Mike Harris. “Do it for the kids” she said.
Not then. Not now. Not EVER.
The US,European and Canadian economies are running out of time. We have granted monopolies to the big unions (public sector, utilities, CAW, CUPW, Ports, etc.) These unions have abused the priveledge they were granted. If we don’t get a government who will stand up and break the power of these monopolies, we likely have less than 10 years until collapse. The goose that laid the golden egg (independent business) is on life support.
Home schooling works.
Sasquatch
It is no different here in BC. School boards are dominated by Liberal and NDPers who are quite often retired educators or married to same. It would be easy if there was actually some grand scheme they were hatching but quite frankly my experience is they don’t have a clue. They have no concept of how the money is raised that they spend and frankly don’t care. They only know that there is more from where that came from.
What they really want to say is, “We’re Doing the Kids”.
DrD nails it.
Let me fix that headline for you:
“We’re Doing This With the Kids!”
“I predict that up here most all governments will cave in and give the unions whatever they want”
WILL cave in? You’re funny, Robert…
The situation with the unions differs little, IMO from the Liberal Party of Canada and Ad-Scam. The Dems have been in control of State gov’ts and the Federal congress for so long that they’ve found a wonderful way to fund the Democrat Party. They have been increasing wages, benifets and pensions for public sector unions beyond what is reasonable, knowing full well that the workers can afford higher dues, which in turn union leaders deposit back into the Democratic coffers, particularly at election time. “Taxpayer money” is recycled through the workers, then the unions and back to a political party. Everybody is friends, everything is cool,,,,,till conseratives get control.(This probably has happened with RINO’s as well)
Some (many?) government officials will (continue) to cave to the unions. The unions are, effectively their pay masters and puppet masters.
However, regardless of how many spineless crooks there are in office (basically the entire political class) they cannot change the math of our situation. WE ARE BROKE!
Temporarily, we can print money (i.e. the FED), we can have quasi-government agencies (again, the FED) buy govt bonds, govt’s can loan each other money that they conjure up from thin air (going on between US Govt and State Govt’s, EU member state govts, US FED and EU, etc., etc.
However, these ploys are like an individual using one credit card to pay another, borrowing on the house to pay the car loan, delaying paying bills until they threaten to turn off the phone, etc.
THESE TRICKS CAN POSTPONE THE INEVITABLE BUT IT CANNOT CHANGE THE FINAL OUTCOME.
The first domino to fall will likely be Japan within a few years. Once the reality that sovereign default can happen in an developed country sinks in, the process will spread and accelerate. Prepare to survive, if you think you can. Most will not survive.
It could be prevented, but it will not be. There are no leaders and no will to do what must be done.
“We’re doing this for the kids!”
“Just kidding, show us the money.”
beagle @10:14 – dude, have you met “the rabble” recently? Most public schools do not provide an adequate education. There are many reasons for this, but teachers unions are right at the top of the list.
I do believe every child is entitled to an education, but private schools/the voucher system is the only chance that there is to make that happen.
I love dr.savage hei s awsome and i wish kate would play him moreo n here …yes yes i know he is all about the u.s. but i still like what he has to say.
Nothing is so amazing as Public sector union ineptitude. They actually can’t fathom the public not agreeing with them. I remember when Gordon Campbell went on a tear against public spending. So many fond memories. Will our governments cave? I’m not sure they can. Bond yields are rising for American and Canadian debt. Canada’s housing bubble has to pop at some point, and Quebec is a disaster. The feds certainly aren’t going to lift a finger to reduce their spending. The push will come from the provinces.
If you live in Ontario Sasquatch at 8:32 a.m. nails it.
I miss Mike Harris.
But mention his name to any union member and it is like they suddenly get the rabies and start frothing at the mouth.
I do believe every child is entitled to an education, but private schools/the voucher system is the only chance that there is to make that happen.
Posted by: Black Mamba
Your absolutely right. In Alberta even the Public schools have charter schools & private schools. Homeschooling is encouraged & the money follows the student, not the system.
In Edmonton alone with the University we have 23 Colleges & special technical & trades programs from private providers.
The only maggots in the bin, is the Unions & Government Educrates.
The bane of most Good teachers, the teddy bear for the rottens.
JMO