Baghdad and Kabul? No – The Most Dangerous Place in the World is Between the Teachers Unions and the Public Trough

The American public education system is going the way of the auto companies and just like the $17.4 billion American taxpayers forked over to bail out outrageous employee contracts and spineless spending decisions of management, labor unions are hoping their allies in Congress will throw them a lifeline.

The difference, of course, is that prior to the bailout, those private sector companies could actually go bankrupt – no one was “too big to fail.” There was an invisible mechanism that prevented labor from pushing too far because while it’s greedy, even the UAW knew that there would be a limit to the pay and bennies it could extract from the auto manufacturers. In that instance, the parasite knew when to stop sucking.

Public schools, largely a monopolistic system not held accountable by competition, don’t have that same invisible force keeping labor in check. Therefore, if the outrageous demands of labor and current spending practices of school districts outpace the money coming into the coffers, they’ll go out and wring their hands, tell sob stories about Johnny having to sit on Georgie’s lap in class because of a lack of desks and demand more “revenue.” From you, the taxpayer.

This should be a huge issue for the Tea Party movement. This has been a problem for far too long and we’ve allowed the tax eaters, that is, teachers unions, to fleece the American public into thinking that more spending, which ultimately ends up in their members’ pockets, somehow equates to better outcomes.

Just because I raise the price of a Yugo doesn’t mean it suddenly starts driving like a BMW. It’s still a piece of crap – you’re just paying more for it. Sweet deal if you can be on the good end of it. But for the rest of us left holding the bill, it’s a sour deal – dare I say, a lemon?

Organized labor, specifically the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, don’t even try to hide their agenda behind better student outcomes. When Sen. Tom Harkin and Rep. Dave Obey introduced legislation to create a $23 billion $10 billion “Emergency Education Jobs Fund,” it had nothing to do with whether or not the money being spent was going to make us more competitive in the world, it had everything to do with the latest Obama public works project for the friends who happened to have spent tens of millions of dollars electing them.

The NEA posted a video on YouTube – which it has since, remarkably, taken down – with the headline, “The issue is JOBS.” Naturally. The most dangerous place to stand in the world is not on the streets of Baghdad or Kabul – it’s between teachers unions and the public trough.

And speaking of that, because Democrats know the spending is so unpopular, they inserted it into a war spending bill so if you vote against more education spending, clearly, you hate the troops!

It would serve the Tea Party movement well to get engaged with how the biggest portion of each state’s budget is spent because clearly as more and more is spent each year, we’re not seeing that return on the “investment” the unions are twisting arms for. You want to hold Big Government candidates accountable? Pin them down on education spending. Do they favor reforming spending, potentially stepping on the toes of monied special interests to maximize the tax dollars currently available, or do they want to continue pouring money down the rat hole to ease some feeling of guilt or to butter up a powerful campaign financier?

We all know teachers unions don’t exist to meet the needs of students – they serve the adults. We need to stop pretending that they have students’ interests in mind and we should openly laugh when they suggest otherwise. We need to stand up to labor and demand that the workers come second and the children come first. And if they aren’t willing to do that, we’ll do what is necessary to see that change occurs.

Until then, we have only ourselves to blame for allowing Big Labor to control the agenda and purse strings, putting America’s future in greater jeopardy in the name of fat pensions and union power.