“This is beyond insane,” Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith said Tuesday night. “Let’s create the most chaos and the highest level of anxiety in a district where teachers are already under unbelievable stress. Now I know how the United States State Department felt on Dec. 7 , 1941.”
woah. somebody needs to let out their corset and have a good cry.
The really sad part of that entire article? The reporter found it necessary to inform te reader that Dec 7th, 1941 was the day the Japanese attacked America.
Really? The people of Providence don’t know that? If so, then they can’t fire the teachers soon enough.
I see the fact that this mass pink-slipping was necessitated by d@mn fool regulations is completely lost on the union weenies. Regulations which I am sure were custom designed to suit union specifications and passed by buddy-buddy Democrat reps.
Still, an impressive show of determination (or desperation) by state officials in the bluest of DemocRat Blue localities. They must really be hurtin’ for a buck.
My administration will do all it can to support our committed, hardworking teachers during this difficult time.”
I can see why so many of them would be stressed out if metrics like committed and hardworking were applied to their rehiring evaluation.
For the record, I work in a growing industry (mining) in a thriving economy (Saskatchewan) yet near 100% of the 400+ people working in my office have been dealing with the nagging fear of large lay-offs for a few years now. I commend my employer for doing their best to maintain the employment numbers in the relatively slow period we’ve experienced. If anything, I’d suggest that this perceived ‘threat’ of possible unemployment has if anything, made me and my peers work harder. All of that said, I don’t think anyone here begrudges our company, nor will when eventualities eventually come to pass. We understand it’s the numbers, it’s not personal.
This is just another example of reality smacking the unions in the face.jmo
BTW, what’s lost in this discussion, especially in Wisconsin’s place, is the argument from the Left that the solution to the revnue short fall is to increase revenue. That means increasing taxes! I wonder how public polling would go if the public understood that the alternative to the Wisconsin Anti-Union Bill is higher taxes for the public?
‘He said it makes no sense to send out dismissal notices to every teacher because the district has a legal obligation to educate all of its students, regardless of budget considerations. “You have so many students,” he said. “You need so many teachers. You have a student-teacher ratio of 26 to 1. Do the math.” ‘
How does that quotation go again? ‘No one needs to be a doctor?’
Finally, someone is taking my advice. For years, I’ve been demanding that everyone in education be fired and we start from scratch.
Yes, dear – your petty union troubles are JUST like the start of the largest, most destructive war the world has ever seen.
Moron.
The joy of being forced against your human rights to join a union, where you have no more individual rights, when you are forced to pay “dues” to that union so it can pay big bucks to the union “management”.
The Right to Work is a basic Human Right and it should always trump the union mandated legal requirement to join up and pay them.
I read the other day that 2/3’s of the grade 8 level in Wisconsin do not perform at grade 8 language skills.
Maybe starting over is a good thing, kinda like a reset button.
Oh
NO
Now they target board of education
to let all kids back to village
with no education
if they hit budget to cut from teachers
and add
Hilicoptor jet for Mackay girls freinds
I heard cost of Mackay war minister number of girl freinds
is more than
cost of pay to teachers in Canada
Is that true
we all must live back to village
who need education
we know it all
plus our children end up stupid when they go to school
we cut heritage
we cut pay to church and mosque
we cut to pay board of education
we cut to pay for poor welfare
we cut tax to help rich
that is the best solution from Harper government
The Showdown approaches. I hope it isn’t pretty.
Perhaps the unions have finally awoken the sleeping giant.
Hey New…. Take your meds and go back to your village. They want their idiot back.
New is sounding like a product of the “Harper Education System” Doh!
“Now I know how the United States State Department felt on Dec. 7 , 1941.”
On that Sunday the state department felt moronic and said a bunch of dumb things?
Gee – If I were a union leader I wouldn’t be hollering “Do the math” … it appears doing the math is exactly what is happening.
Isn’t bringing the Japanese into this argument racist?
Congrats Kate. When will we see you at Westminster?
New is part of another group who’s due for some drastic cutbacks; immigrant/refugee/polygamist/muslim/welfare recipient/ghetto dwelling/America hating/new Canadians.
They see the gravy train pulling away from the station, and it scares them. You can expect to see angry support for the teachers growing over the next little while, from some odd groups.
hmmmmm . . . maybe switch to Camels & get a free gig on the Daily Show
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2011/02/daily-show-brings-live-camel-to-icy.html
I know I shouldn’t be suprised but it always seems a little shocking to see how incredibly infantile and insular the spoiled-brat unionized teachers seem. Another good reason to end the child abuse we now know as public education.
Dang, I thought the Japanese NAVY attacked Pearl Harbour – not “the Japanese government”. The vision of a swarm of bureaucrats rushing ashore waving forms in triplicate is truly terrifying.
School bus drivers receive layoff notices every year just before Christmas break, Easter Break and the end of June simply because students do not attend school during those periods. Why not apply the same logic to teachers?
I know. I know. Apples and oranges. However, there are similarities between the two professions, rate of pay and benefits not being among them.
Comparing the carnage and destruction of Pearl Harbour to a small bump in the road for the unionized teachers is more than a bit of a stretch.
What is a Hilicoptor jet and where do I buy one?! I demand to know!
I always wondered if this was a good way to break seniority, after all, if there are no positions to “bump” to, there’s no possibility of seniority coming into play. Of course, I never thought I’d see the day when someone would have the gonads to actually do it, but it seemed like a good idea in theory.
“New is sounding like a product of the “Harper Education System” Doh!”
Education is a provincial responsibility. Doh, indeed.
I didn’t know new was a union sympathizer, although it looked like she proofread a lot of the protester’s placards.
The union fellow showed remarkable restraint for his type,he merely compared his victim group to a WW2 battle,rather than the Holocaust.
“Dec 7th, 1941 was the day the Japanese attacked America.”
I’ve always been suspicious of that claim.I think it was actually part of the world wide Zionist conspiracy,and the battle cry was meant to be ,”Torah,Torah,Torah”.
M
I don’t know where to get one, but I’m sure this guy could build one.
Indiana, good for you, keep digging, the more the better.
I remember the concept of “job for life” very well since I felt I fell into one of those when I started work with a large mainframe computer vendor back in August 1965. Computers were coming in like gangbusters and the percieved wisdom was that if you were good in that field, you had a job for life.
Nobody at that time had any idea of the rapid changes that would come along in the next few years, and sure enough, after about 25 years the mainframe computer industry went the way of the dinosaurs almost overnight. Twenty years ago this week I got “the fax” saying my job for life was being terminated. Fortunately, I was able to hire myself out for the next few years as an independent consultant.
Times change, conditions change. Learn to go with the flow.
mojo:
Sit down, my friend. This news may come as a shock to you, but WWII did not start on December 7, 1941. It started with the German attack on Poland in September, 1939. The US sat out the first two years of the war, although they did provide materiel to the Allies.
There are persistent rumours that FDR and some of his Cabinet wanted to enter the war, but were prevented from doing so by the expressed intent of Americans to continue their isolationist policy. FDR skirted this through, for example, the Lend-Lease act. However, itching for a chance to enter the war directly, he created a series of maneuvers, such as freezing Japanese assets in the US, cutting them off from US oil, and moving the Navy’s Pacific fleet from their safe base in San Diego to the exposed one at Pearl. If these actions were intended to provoke the Japanese, they were highly successful.
I personally wasn’t around, so I don’t know if any of this is true, but it sure sounds more plausible than the Japanese high command suddenly deciding to venture halfway across the ocean and launch a new style of attack. “Hey, Tojo.. we’ve got nothing going on this month. Wanna attack the US?”
Indiana
Sweet! thanks! My girls friends won’t stop badgering me for them it’s been a nightmare! Did you hear cost of M number of girls friends is more than cost of pay to teachers in whole world? It’s true!
Sometimes…when I’m sitting on all the missiles that I have, with no hilicopter jets to put them in, I just want it all to end. T-T
KevinB
We can even got all the way back to July 1937 when Japan launched the massive invasion of China as the start of the 2nd world war. Except most historians discount that because it was really a rescue operation to save a soldier who didn’t come back from taking a leak.
Thanks Ken.
Today my family is very fortunate as many businesses are moving to Saskatchewan driving the demand and salaries up for my line of work. I have recently accepted an ‘offer I can’t refuse’ and it’s all due to hard work, and a thriving business climate. This is why I take great umbrage to the Sask Dippers and their quest to raise royalty rates on potash. These fcukers drive me nuts!
M
Me? I’ve got ‘sharks with laser beams’ and I’m just waiting for some green technology to power my plan for world domination.
BTW, I do have a plan ‘b’; but I’d have to kill you and stuff. Although, you’re death is likely necessary for “plan ‘b'” to succeed anyways. Now I definitely must Keeellll You!
Cutting the fat is painfully necessary for those overfed at the public trough.
What a melodramatic statement, December 7th.
Tora means tiger, by the way.
Just thought I’d share.
M
Me? I’ve got ‘sharks with laser beams’ and I’m just waiting for some green technology to power my plan for world domination.
BTW, I do have a plan ‘b’; but I’d have to kill you and stuff. Although, you’re death is likely necessary for “plan ‘b'” to succeed anyways. Now I definitely must Keeellll You!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1aSMhAAWg8&feature=related
Dear brothers and sisters
I came during Mulroney prime ministery’s time
Is spelling of Mulroney is correct or wrong?
nobody care
I have 14 years of univeristy background
sorry if my English is like your budget of conservative is broken
I still wait Harper to fix it
Plus I noticed even if fix my English nobody hire third work countries in Canada then I am working in area not need to know English and people around me are also like me or we talk Arabic who all we know well
he start cut every thing to new arrival to Canada
my English is also like broken law of conservative not get completed
plus you should not care
hay I am farmer’s daughter
and I love to live in village
It does not mean all people in Canada should live in village
unless really budget of conservative like my English get broken too
leave poor teachers in Canada alone
thank you
If Roosevelt really had wanted to enter the war against Hitler, he would have done so. He never did. It was Germany that declared war on the US, not the other way round.
We can safely say that FDR did not intend to provoke the Japanese into destroying the American Pacific fleet, leaving America powerless as Japan conquered Asia and the Pacific. He certainly did all those provocative things set out above, intending to provoke Japan into climbing down and doing as it was told. Anyone who wants to know how well that worked can visit the hulk of the USS Arizona and see for himself.
There is a certain mindset that believes implicitly that only the Americans can do anything, and they always do exactly what they want. If you are of such a mind, then the fact that there was a war proves that the Americans started it on purpose. Why you’d sink to such thinking if you have a choice is beyond me.
Fred at February 23, 2011 11:52 AM
I know just how you feel.
Some further background on the educational system in RI. Earlier last year, then entire teaching staff of the worst performing district were fired. This was the alternative the superintendent took in order to implement her turnaround model. Many were rehired but on different terms, IIRC.
http://www.projo.com/education/content/central_falls_teachers.1_02-13-10_A8HEI7Q_v61.3a65218.html
Read the comments for the follow up.
Many moons ago, it used to be that public servants were modestly paid but in compensation for lower wages they were provided with good benefits, job security and enhanced pensions. Now, thanks to their unions, they have all that, plus above-average wages.
Public servants killed their own golden goose when they demanded and received collective bargaining rights. After years of forcing local and state governments into serious debt, through ever-escalating demands for more money, less efficiency and better benefits, their greed (and stupidity) is coming back to bite them.
The goose has succumbed to its injuries and public servants will only be surviving on its bare bones for some time to come.
It is truly unfortunate that teachers’ unions, especially, spent so much of their time and resources fighting reform of the education system, as Valencia’s link, for one, demonstrates. A willingness to focus less on inputs and more on outputs would have stood them in better stead with, particularly, an aging public.
At a time when we needed our schools to produce a generation of children who were even more knowledgeable, productive and entrepreneurial than previous generations, we instead got generation with more functional, economic, scientific and cultural illiterates, many of whom look to government or other quasi-government organizations, as collective fairness fairies, to solve all manner of individual economic and social woes.
Our children are going to have a very rude awakening. I hope they don’t hold it too much against us.
ebt:
If you are of such a mind, then the fact that there was a war proves that the Americans started it on purpose. Why you’d sink to such thinking if you have a choice is beyond me.
What kind of nonsense is this? When did I ever say the Americans started the war? And your contention that FDR could have entered the war in Europe if he wanted to is utterly wrong. I suggest you read up on “American Isolationism”; it was hugely strong after the American losses in WWI, and led to such things as the 1935 “Neutrality Act”, which prohibited the US from providing arms to any “combatant nation”. So long as the wars were with Ethiopia (note to M: you could say WWII started with the 1935 Italian invasion there, but that one and the Sino-Japanese war only involved two nations, not the world) or China, Americans were content to sit out the fighting. But after Hitler’s takeover of Europe, isolationism began to wane, as many Americans of European extraction became concerned. Still, it took the attack on Pearl Harbour to push them to the brink.
Roosevelt had already declared war on Japan before Hitler declared it on the US; Hitler had to do so as a member of the “Tripartite Pact”. Still, FDR had to request Congress’s approval before he could announce it – he received it with only one dissenting vote.
Jan @ 6:32, like me, you must be old enough to have first hand knowledge of what you write in this regard. Many of those public servants were also WW II vets.
Calm down, Kevin. I didn’t say “you, Kevin, personally” think like this. But that’s the mindset from which the ideas you’ve presented come.
Hitler was under no obligation to declare war on the US, and no one had any reason to expect him to do so; another reason why we can be pretty sure that Roosevelt’s dealings with Japan were not intended to get the US into the European war. Japan’s treaties with Germany were directed only against the USSR, and they didn’t require either party to go to war if the other did; otherwise, Japan would have declared war on Russia in 1940, and not Russia on Japan in 1945.
Yes, I’m vaguely aware on how war gets declared in the US. My point is that Roosevelt never intended to do it. There was a lot he could have done if he’d wanted to. But he never imagined that Britain or even France was actually at serious risk – no one did – and he saw no reason to use American force to back up those two oppressive empires, who after all had gone to war on their own initiative. He didn’t like Hitler, but he was content to let the US make money backing the opposition to him, rather than spend money fighting him.
Jan – The unions have destroyed every sector they have been given sway over.
The other half of the story of the declining quality of public education is that each school district, is by law, guaranteed paying customers. Any business that has a $6000 (or more ) cost advantage per customer can safely be thought of as a pure monopoly. Public schools have declined for the same reason GM and Ford swooned in the late ’60’s – no competition. Not until the Japanese firms entered the market with sufficient capital to be competitive did Detroit try to clean up its act. Even then, the CAFE standards the UAW had put into law provided a nearly unsinkable life raft to these moribund firms.
ebt:
Hitler was under no obligation to declare war on the US, and no one had any reason to expect him to do so
I suggest you look up the details of the Tripartite Pact. You are utterly wrong.
Unions engineered annual lay-off notices, it happens all over the States, it’s a regular publicity stunt to build support for the ‘poor teachers’. It means nothing.
Just to lighten the mood. The creepiest teacher my boys were up against, retired last year. I hope she falls down some stairs.
There now don’t we all feel better? I do.
Kevin, I have. I’m not. Did Hitler declare war on China?