This year has not been kind to the land of the free. Due to advancing ignorance and arrogance – a deadly combination – the basic tenets of our republic are in trouble, and public education is at the center of much of what is wrong. While we went through a similar socio-political upheaval in the...
“A public employer shall provide all public employees an orientation and shall permit the exclusive representative, if applicable, to participate.” – Excerpt from California State Assembly Bill AB 52, December 2016 In plain English, AB 52 requires every local government agency in California to bring union representatives into contact with every new hire, to “allow...
How would you like it if every time you received a property tax bill from your county assessor, you also received a notice that disclosed the amount of the county’s total debt, annual operating expenses, total unfunded liability for pensions, and total unfunded liability for retirement healthcare? You might not like it, but you’d have...
California’s minimum wage is set to gradually increase to $15 by 2022, following in the footsteps of minimum wage pioneer city Seattle. Unfortunately, the unintended consequences of Seattle’s minimum wage experiment are starting to show, both in deteriorating restaurant quality and in decreasing wages for low-income workers. According to the latest study, Seattle’s 2016 minimum...
Thanks to collective bargaining, traditional public school teachers “get sick” way too often. It’s no secret that many teachers take advantage of the “sick days” that are part of a typical union collective bargaining agreement (CBA). Of course, while sick days are used legitimately by all teachers at some point, many (including yours truly, on...
Anti-school choicers are getting desperate. The traditional public education monopolists are using some truly bizarre arguments to ensure that children remain in government-run schools. In July, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten intimated that parents who opt out of government schools are equivalent to southern segregationists. Then later in July, Katherine Stewart penned possibly...
There is no dearth of teachers; in fact, we may have too many. A nationwide shortage of teachers threatens quality education, according to the education establishment and its advocates in the media. But as with the population bomb, Y2K, and the devils of Loudon, the reality of the supposed crisis is quite different from its representation. A look...
Apostate speaks plain and simple truth to the powerful unions. We are in the middle of the fifth annual National Employee Freedom Week, a nation-wide effort to inform employees about their union membership options. In 22 non-right-to-work (NRTW) states, an employee can become a full-fledged member, an agency fee payer (avoids paying for the union’s...
Firing one employee is big news, while not firing hundreds is ignored. Without going through another weedy analysis of James Damore’s firing from Google – Holman Jenkins, George Leef and Nick Gillespie have done a fine job of that – let’s just say the Silicon Valley engineer was canned for stating what most scientists and...
Despite what union leaders say, competition makes everything better. A 1995 interview with the late Apple founder Steve Jobs has just resurfaced and is available on YouTube. While the interview, conducted by Computerworld’s Daniel Morrow, went on for 75 minutes, the 3:42 Jobs spent talking about education is memorable. The Silicon Valley visionary knew as...
Union leader sinks to a new low by hyping a worthless report and insulting millions of parents. When some people become frightened, they’ll say and do some amazingly asinine things. Utilizing that as a guide, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten is apparently scared spitless. With Supreme Court decisions on the horizon that could...
Through the courts and legislation, Americans are telling the unions where to stick their privilege. Via weak-kneed and corrupt elected officials, unions have been taking advantage of American citizens left and right for years now. But in ever greater numbers, people are standing up to the bullies and fighting back. “Release time” is a practice...
The yearly NEA convention was replete with the usual bogeymen, rah-rah talk, weird new business items and a bit more angst than usual. This last year should have been a pip for the National Education Association. Antoni Scalia’s death killed Friedrichs and kept forced unionism alive and well in half the country. And the inevitable...
Forced unionism may soon be illegal, but a mandatory union propaganda law is now on the books in California. The public employee unions, especially the teacher union variety, are very jittery over the prospect that the Janus case, if successful in the U.S. Supreme Court next year, could free government workers from paying forced dues...