…are in the same boat as teachers in most other states, evidently, members of a union that is just as hungry for increased dues, so as to purchase still more “stock” in the National Democratic Party, the kind price-tagged by campaign contributions.

So in Jersey, they’re on the warpath against the governor, whose tax cuts aren’t helping them feed their bottomless coffers.

… Facebook attacks really took off.

One educator, a librarian with a master’s degree, described the cuts as “rediculous.”

Another pointed out that Christie’s late mother was a member of the teachers union: “It’s not right to bite the hand that feeds you. Oh I forgot it’s Chirs Christie, He’s so large I bet he’d bite anything that’s put in front of his face!”

“Remember Pol Pot, dictator of Cambodia?” warned another. “He reigned in terror, his target was teachers and intellectuals. They were either killed or put into forced labor . . . King Kris Kristy is headed in this direction.”

It is always thus with the unions, they know we’re in a tight recession, they know the school districts are enduring massive shortfalls, so this is when they make their demands. These are not dedicated instructors of our youth, they are greedy opportunists who want to milk the budget wherever possible.

Personally, I don’t believe in teachers’ unions, just as I don’t endorse unions in any critical infrastructure.

In years gone by, every job I ever held where I worked for other people saw the same question and answer at the interview:

Interviewer — How much money are you looking for?

Me — Pay me what you think is fair, and we’ll talk again in three months.

I provided them with the opportunity to let me prove myself; If I wasn’t producing, then why should they be expected to pay me more than they were, or even keep me on the payroll? As it was, I generally ended up being either better compensated or even promoted before the three month periods had elapsed.

Why shouldn’t teachers have to do the same thing? Look at the less than satisfactory product so many of them have been putting out the last several years! Why should they automatically get uniform salary increases if they’re not successful, even, in teaching their students as well as do their colleagues in numerous third world countries?

In non-union, private sector careers, these teachers would have to demonstrate their asset value first. In the public sector, they simply assume that they’re entitled to as much of the taxpayer’s money as they can get.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that teaching is a vital profession, but I also believe in meritorious raises. I wouldn’t mind seeing a great teacher earning $100,000.00 a year, but I also can’t see one who can’t teach “earning” the same as the great teacher. Paying the successes the same as the failures is not a good precedent.

Christie’s supporters have responded with a Facebook page of their own. “Teachers need to sit down and shut up. They live in a dream world where they work 180 days a year,” it asserted. “Way overpaid to start with, they could never make it working in the real world.”

Even in these tough economic times, teachers in most New Jersey districts have continued to get annual negotiated raises - often about 4 percent - and don’t have to help pay for their health insurance.

So Christie has offered more money to districts that can get teachers unions to revise their contracts and freeze salaries for next school year -and agree to start paying 1.5 percent of their salaries toward their health insurance.

So far, teachers in only 20 of the state’s 590 school districts have agreed to any concessions.

In 2006, the last year for which data was available, New Jersey teachers made an average of $58,000. The salary, in one of the highest cost-of-living states, was fourth in the nation.

After a New Jersey teacher’s union wished Christie dead - like “my favorite singer, Michael Jackson” - the group’s president, Joe Coppola, of the Bergen County Education Association, called it a bad attempt at humor and apologized.

Christie’s people weren’t impressed. “The union is, has been, and probably always will be a bully,” the governor’s spokesman, Michael Drewniak, said in an interview last week.

Some of these teachers even had their pupils march outside the schools, skipping classes, and strike for them. WTF is that!?

That, my friends, is what you get when you allow the far left into your political system.

Hat Tip James Taranto, Best of the Web Today.

Christie’s supporters have responded with a Facebook page of their own. “Teachers need to sit down and shut up. They live in a dream world where they work 180 days a year,” it asserted. “Way overpaid to start with, they could never make it working in the real world.”

Even in these tough economic times, teachers in most New Jersey districts have continued to get annual negotiated raises - often about 4 percent - and don’t have to help pay for their health insurance.

So Christie has offered more money to districts that can get teachers unions to revise their contracts and freeze salaries for next school year -and agree to start paying 1.5 percent of their salaries toward their health insurance.