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January 04, 2006

Where Teachers' Union Dues Go

Now this is a bunch of B.S.

If we told you that an organization gave away more than $65 million last year to Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Amnesty International, AIDS Walk Washington and dozens of other such advocacy groups, you'd probably assume we were describing a liberal philanthropy. In fact, those expenditures have all turned up on the financial disclosure report of the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers union.

Whas, as they say, sup with that?

Under new federal rules pushed through by Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, large unions must now disclose in much more detail how they spend members' dues money. Big Labor fought hard (if unsuccessfully) against the new accountability standards, and even a cursory glance at the NEA's recent filings--the first under the new rules--helps explain why. They expose the union as a honey pot for left-wing political causes that have nothing to do with teachers, much less students.

This does indeed bring up an interesting question. The question? WTF!?

Last time I looked, a union's reason for existing was to make sure its members were compensated and otherwise treated fairly. Isn't that what they tell us? Isn't that what their members pay dues for?

We already knew that the NEA's top brass lives large. Reg Weaver, the union's president, makes $439,000 a year. The NEA has a $58 million payroll for just over 600 employees, more than half of whom draw six-figure salaries. Last year the average teacher made only $48,000, so it seems you're better off working as a union rep than in the classroom.

Hmmmmmmm....

The new disclosure rules mark the first revisions since 1959 and took effect this year. "What wasn't clear before is how much of a part the teachers unions play in the wider liberal movement and the Democratic Party," says Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency, a California-based watchdog group. "They're like some philanthropic organization that passes out grant money to interest groups."

Indeed.

There's something really, really seedy and corrupt about this.

Remember, our country is a capitalist republic, the primary reason we are the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, and these political organizations to which the National Education Association donates so much of its members' dues to are socialist organizations.

Socialism is the antithesis of capitalism. One of its tenets is that no matter how hard you work and how successful you become as a result, you are entitled to no more than a nonachiever and therefore, rather than enjoying the fruits of your labors, you must share it with said nonachiever through merciless taxation.

That's not what the United States of America is about, never has been and hopefully never will be, though these internal enemies continue to eat away at the foundations of our way of life and our form of government, using the very freedoms they want to destroy against us.

The fact that the NEA helps to top off their warchests can be construed as a kind of unpunishable treason.

They are backing organizations that threaten our nation from within, yet they cannot be prosecuted because what these organizations do is completely legal according to our supremely benevolent Constitution. Yeah, that's the one, the document that authorizes them to speak freely, lobby freely, spit on or burn the American flag and wipe their backsides with it if they so desire. What they promote would be a country devoid of most of its rights, an Orwellian government that micromanages its citizens, as I said in my early blogging days, establishing a politically correct, assinine excuse for existence akin to that in the Stallone/Snipes film Demolition Man, only run more along the lines of the failed and long-since-gone-Chapter-Eleven Soviet Union.

And that's what the mother ship of U.S. teachers' unions contributes its members' dues to.

It's well understood that the NEA is an arm of the Democratic National Committee. (Or is it the other way around?) But we wonder if the union's rank-and-file stand in unity behind this laundry list of left-to-liberal recipients of money that comes out of their pockets.

Posted by Seth at January 4, 2006 11:47 AM

Comments

Posted by: james waite at January 14, 2006 05:11 AM

Posted by: Seth at January 14, 2006 05:29 AM