Republicans, the Scourge of public employee unions
The attack on public employee unions, including teachers, is a brilliant tactic by Republicans against the Democratic Party. President Obama chose a national leader of charter schools, the privatization of public education, his secretary of education. Public school-teacher unions are among the most powerful of all the public employee unions now under such serious attack by several Republican governors. Republicans understand that public employee unions have been an essential part of the Democratic Party for several decades. Public employee union members provide much of the work the party needs to maintain its political power. Obama, following former President Clinton, is selling out the base and the political volunteers in the Democratic Party because the White House is like Congress beholden to Wall Street and Wall Street dictates a policy that no president will use his bully pulpit to recognize the savage class warfare that Wall Street has inflicted on the entire American middle class and its growing population of poor and destitute citizens.
Obama's remarks on the non-stop demonstrations of public employees' unions in Wisconsin, now spreading to Ohio (to combat the same anti-collective bargaining bill) are as tepid as his remarks on the revolts in Egypt, Libya and other Arab nations. The president seems to be betting that the large percentage of independent voters in the country have neither memory, social conscience and don't belong to public employees' unions. To call these people "our neighbors" as the president did the other night is to greatly diminish the role of teachers, police, firefighters, and the employees of the governmental departments that make the country run, however badly it is running.
Why did teachers and other public employees feel enough need to organize unions to go out against great opposition and do it fifty years ago?
Badlands Journal editorial board
2-21-11
Current TV
Are you sick of highly paid teachers?
source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/patisok/wisconsin-democratic-senators-illinois_n_825748...
bundlebear added this “Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or10 months a year! It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - babysit!
Let's give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan-- that equals 6 1/2 hours).
Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day...maybe 30? So that's $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations. That's $585 X 180= $105,300 per year.
What about special education teachers and the ones with Master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an
hr That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.
Wait a minute -- there's something wrong here! The average teacher's salary
(nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days= $277.77/per day/30
students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student--a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids
YOURS TRULY SARCASM