Posted by
rycK on Tuesday, December 23, 2008 11:38:01 AM
Herbert Races for
the Bottom as He Salutes Unionism and Apologizes for Educational Failure.
We are
always excited to study and digest the frenetic political theorizing that is proffered as thinking at the New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers. Bob Herbert,
in today’s article in the soon-t0-be-bankrupt Times reshuffles his certified stack of soiled clichés and ‘teaches’ us all
about the good work that ‘teachers’ do in this country and calls for more money to be shoveled into sacred leftist causes
such as unionism. Whatever happens in the economy, we need to raise taxes. Soak
the taxpayers.
He begins with a preposterous
comment by some union boss:
““Think of a teacher who is staying up past midnight to prepare her lesson
plan... Think of a teacher who is paying for equipment out of his own pocket so
his students can conduct science experiments that they otherwise couldn’t do...
Think of a teacher who takes her students to a ‘We, the People’ debating
competition over the weekend, instead of spending time with her own family.””—a quote from American Federation of
Teachers, Randi Weingarten in: A Race
to the Bottom By Bob Herbert Op-Ed Columnist Published: December
22, 2008
This
following op-ed piece is a pitiful
attempt at leftist apologetics [apologia (απολογ?α), meaning a speaking
in defense. ]by
the least skilled cognitive resource at the Times. Friedman must be on
vacation. Weingarten is
a leftist politico.
What we
have here is a sob session as the boundless
sleaze, political correctness and formalized union featherbedding now work in
reverse as our economy goes into a deflationary loop from which many, like Detroit, will never recover. Many of
these union people are going to lose their jobs and America will the better for this. They
have failed us. Bob Herbert attempts to put a little spin on the issues and
reverse the facts.
We are
told sad stories about how dedicated
the ‘teachers’ are and how hard and well the greedy union featherbedders have
worked for their stogy union work rules and astronomical benefits. Several
things are missing from Herbert’s slobbery screed today and we should review
them:
Education in the US is a disaster and
the slimy and Marxian teacher’s unions are
mostly to blame.
The
school test scores fall year after year
as the taxation rises and teachers bawl for more and more money while striving for new means to ‘dumb down’ the
students so minorities will appear to be ‘closing’ the education gap. Things are so bad that now Obama
calls for College for Everybody with NO SATs?!
This is a tacit admission that our ‘educational system’ cannot even get people
through high school but they must be sent to ‘college’ to learn to read at taxpayer
expense. Obama sides with the phony
teacher’s unions that don’t want to use testing. Standardized tests will
highlight the problem in our schools and that is the last thing the union
teachers want to see happen. Poor students and incompetent teachers will be
exposed. That is worth voting for a liberal Democrat. No incompetent teacher
will ever be fired for that reason.
We need to test the teachers too
and see if they can get above 700 on the SATs.
Are we
supposed to believe that our teachers in the L.A. Unified School system stay up late working on
lesson plans? Is this too funny to believe?
Have we
forgotten about busing
and Head
Start—two marvelous leftist programs that were to ‘solve’ many of our educational problems?
Gee, what happened to busing? Didn’t that raise test scores?
What did busing do? Nothing?
“The
quest for ‘equality’
and ‘social
justice’ might be attained in other ways we are told and that
‘education’ of the masses is the way to do this. If we teach our offspring to
be classless and steep them in fairness and humanity then social justice will
spring forth like flowers in the meadows.
The disease that prevented this splendor was capitalism. Any intrinsic
truths in the educational theory entrenched in this message failed to
materialize in the society as a whole because of two factors: propaganda and the maldistribution of cognitive attributes or IQs.” [passage from another
blog]
“Somehow,
the citizens of so-called democracies must be educated and properly propagandized into mere obedient and static pieces of
some grand collage that can be constructed in accordance with modern concepts
of liberalism. But, the difficulty here is that the skeptical must be lead to
believe that they are giving up both power and wealth for some cause. Fear,
compassion and hate are the strongest emotions so a good propagandist must use a complex elixir of all three to
strip the affluent citizens of some or all of their wealth. The leftists have
not ignored this precept. “[ibid]
Many of
our teachers are well grounded in Marxism, propaganda and unionism. These three
tenets form the leftist political pyramid in the country now.
Raise taxes and hire more
teachers!
The
teachers have failed to solve even
the basic problems in education as they persist in their political belief that
propaganda and political indoctrination will produce the ideal citizen. Like
their union counterparts in the auto industry, they rely on Democrat politics
and taxation to fund their phony programs. Test scores plummeted for decades
while teacher salaries and benefits of auto workers soared. That makes a kind
of economic sense to a liberal.
Herbert raves on:
“Last year, before the economy went into free fall and
before any talk of a government rescue, the autoworkers agreed to a 50 percent
cut in wages for new workers at the Big Three,
reducing starting pay to a little more than $14 an hour.”-- [Emphasis is mine in all quotes.]
This is crap. The workers now average some $75
per hour [the number is disputed often now] and they are not competitive with workers in
non union plants who work for half that. They didn’t want to give back the job bank fiasco. Why not pay idle workers 95% of their salaries
for doing nothing? What union boss would complain about this? The greedy
teachers in California have buried that state in debt and spent millions in union dues
on TV ads attacking the Republicans. That is how they stay in power. They bribe
their way to job security with tenure.
“Teachers
and autoworkers are two very different cornerstones of American society, but
they are cornerstones nonetheless. Our attitudes toward them are a reflection
of our attitudes toward working people in general. If we see teachers and
autoworkers as our enemies, we are in serious need of an attitude adjustment.”
Teachers and autoworkers have disgraced
themselves in the market place and in the school room in many places. The
transplanted Asian and German automakers seem to make a profit while the
vaulted UAW featherbeds and slurps on the tax payer like a monkey in heat. GM
is 60 bln in debt and will never
recover. The difference is unionism, greed and leftist politics. Success seems
to blossom when all three of
these negative attributes are not
present in any organization. Private schools have no problems educating our
children—so what is wrong here? Unionism coupled with liberalism? Yes.
Bob,
tell us about this and reply to the questions here:
Why is
the Washington, DC school system the worst rated
in the US [with the possible exception of
the LA Unified School System] when it spends more money per student than any other
district? Do we need educated people as employees or can we just ‘put people to
work doing any old thing’ and call that full employment? How about our spending
some more money on ‘education?’
Why not
raise taxes and pay off the mortgages of some 5 million illegal aliens? That
might make their kids feel better in ‘school’ or when they get free medical
help in emergency rooms at tax payer expense.
Why not hire translators in all our classrooms so the illegal aliens can
learn in their own languages? That makes sense to a liberal Californikan. Isn’t unionism wonderful?
rycK
Comments
to: ryckki@gmail.com
Herbert Moans about Hope Amidst
the Gloom of Unionism. There is Not
Enough Corruption.
“The Education gap is a common
term for describing differences in educational attainment measured by grades,
test scores or other measures between different social groups. The groups
compared often are categorized by race or ethnicity but may also include gender
or other features.”
“The UAW is partly lazy, criminalistic and greedy and has destroyed
several industries like the railroads, steel, and the airlines and now the auto
industry. Where is the Herbert essay on
why and how Toyota, Honda, Hyundai and Volkswagen seems to be doing well, making
profits without problems like Detroit? Is this related to the union sh0ps? Where is the record of union
corruption, like the Teamsters for instance, in a propaganda piece like this
from Herbert? He omits any criticism of
unions. Where is the dissertation on productivity and the contrast comparing union versus non union plants in the US? The market for cars is down 40% across the globe and Detroit has about 7 months of inventory sitting around in parking lots
and we need to pay union types to do what? Sit around and not make cars at $75
an hour? That kind of business logic works only for a moron, a greedy precinct
worker or a socialist. The mindless dolts who sit around at HUD or Social
Security have jobs like that. “
Herbert
Moans about Hope Amidst the Gloom of Unionism.
There is Not Enough Corruption.
Herbert at the NYT: We Need More Race-Based
Government and Higher Taxes to Be Fair.