collective bargaining

New Prager University Video: How Teachers Unions Hurt Schools

Calvin Freiburger collective bargaining, corruption, education, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Left, liberalism, Prager University, public schools, teachers

The latest from Prager University:

Did you go to public school? Do you have a child, relative, or friend in public school? The answer is most likely “yes”. Public schools matter to everyone. They are the main educator of America’s children. So when groups that have a huge affect on education aren’t primarily interested in, well, education, there’s a problem. Those groups are teachers unions.

In our newest free, 5-minute video, Stanford Professor of Political Science Dr. Terry Moe explains why teachers unions are hurting America’s children, and what we can do about this. Here’s Prof. Moe’s book on the topic.
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Scott Walker Stands Victorious as Wisconsin Embodies the Best of Democracy

Calvin Freiburger budget, collective bargaining, conservatism, demagogues, education, good news, GOP, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, integrity, Left, public schools, recalls, Scott Walker, unions, victories, Wisconsin
They tried fleeing the state to indefinitely halt the legislative process. It failed. They poured all the hate they could into their demonstrations and propaganda. It failed. They tried intimidating legislators. It failed. They tried pressuring businesses into supporting them. It failed. They tried persecuting a judge. It failed. They tried demonizingRepublican financial contributors. It failed. They tried smearing the governor’s professional ethics and personal morality. It failed. They tried lying to the public about budgets and benefits. It failed. They tried flouting the law by judicial fiat. It failed. They had teachers commit fraud and indoctrinate their students. It failed. They tried hiding data that undermined their case. It failed. They even managed to get Voter ID out of the way to simplify election fraud. That failed. In total, they cost taxpayers over $9 million.

The motley alliance of union thugs, partisan sycophants, education establishment snobs, left-wing fanatics, and brainwashed college kids that came together to preserve government-employee unions’ stranglehold over Wisconsin took the best shot they had against Governor Scott Walker.

Well, their best just. Wasn’t. Good. Enough.

After more than a year of liberals justifying demagoguery and mob agitation with insipid chants of “this is what democracy looks like,” the state of Wisconsin reaffirmed its trust in Walker in a glorious display of actual democracy—not the shout-down-the-Special-Olympics kind, but the cast-votes-and-count-‘em-up kind.

Though the sore losers will never, ever admit it, June 5, 2012 may go down in history as the day Wisconsin proved America’s slide into fiscal ruin isn’t inevitable, that special interest groups aren’t invincible, and that greed and misinformation don’t have absolute dominion over the public consciousness.

Above all, Wisconsin proved that courage is still viable in American politics—that principled action to serve the long-term interests of the whole over the selfish desires of the loudest or the most well-connected doesn’t have to be a political death sentence.

Granted, the Wisconsin Left has by no means been destroyed (nor has the moderate wing of the GOP). The Democrats and their supporters won’t grow morally from the experience, and the unions are still a force to be reckoned with. But their veneer of invincibility is gone, and it’s never coming back. The conventional wisdom of American politics is being rewritten as we speak.

As conservatives go forward with their economic and social agendas, we also need to take measures to make sure the Left can’t put Wisconsin through this insanity again. In particular, we need to fight to reinstate Voter ID, reform the recall process so it can’t be exploited to punish policy decisions, and do somethingabout classroom indoctrination.

Be proud, Wisconsin. You showed America what democracy looks like at its best.

Wisconsin Schools Are Doing Great. GOP Messaging? Not So Much

Calvin Freiburger collective bargaining, dishonesty, education, GOP, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, incompetence, messaging, public schools, recalls, Scott Walker, strategy, unions, WEAC, Wisconsin
Today, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker released the following graph, based on data that the kind souls at the Wisconsin Education Association Council tried to hide from the public, on the condition of our state’s public schools:
Reforms Working.png
In all four categories – teacher layoffs, class size, retention of extracurricular activities, and retention of fine arts and vocational programs – the teachers union’s own data shows that a higher percentage of school districts are doing well (in two cases, a drastically higher percentage) under Walker’s much-demonized collective bargaining reforms than not only the average for the previous decade, but for that category’s best year in the previous decade.
Add that to what we’ve known for over a year about the benefits teachers will still enjoy under Act 10, not to mention the recent revelation that Wisconsin taxpayers still pay them more than do taxpayers of the surrounding states, and the whole point of the recall collapses. But a narrow majority of voters still say they’d vote Walker out of office.
How can that be? Simple: because the Republicans are doing a lousy job of informing the people. The Left is relentlessly pushing Big Union’s lies through the schools, through the press, and through thuggery, and what advertising the Walker Campaign and the GOP have done in response barely even begins to compensate for the dishonesty.
Why isn’t the above chart in full-page newspaper ads across the state? Why aren’t the success stories from around the state on television every night? Why aren’t graphic comparisons of public and private-sector benefits on billboards throughout Wisconsin? I fear our party leaders are putting far too much faith in talk radio and social media to do the educational heavy lifting for them, content that they can get away with simply fundraising, rallying the faithful, and preaching to the choir.
That’s a recipe for disaster. The people we need to reach, the people who will make the difference come Election Day, aren’t listening to Charlie Sykes or Mark Belling. They don’t have Twitter feeds for conservative reports to show up in. They aren’t glued to the blogosphere. The only way Republicans can get the truth to them is by taking it to where they’re going to be: the commercial breaks of American Idol, the pages of their local paper, the airwaves of their favorite music stations, the billboards along the highways they take to work.
Comforting though it might be for conservatives to think otherwise, talk radio is not equal time. The blogosphere hasn’t created a fundamentally more informed populace. And Scott Walker’s personal goodness will not be enough to save his job in independent voters’ eyes. If we lose this thing, Wisconsin’s Republican elite will have nobody to blame but themselves.

New on Media Trackers – Wisconsin’s Unique, Union-Backed Recalls

Calvin Freiburger budget, collective bargaining, Democrats, fiscal responsibility, GOP, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Media Trackers, recalls, unions, Wisconsin
My debut article for Media Trackers:
Wisconsin may not be the only state moving to control costs by reducing the political influence of public employee unions, but nowhere else has the fallout of reform been so volatile.
Eight state senators have been targeted for recall elections—six Republicans who voted to restrict collective bargaining, and two of the fourteen Democrats who left the state to delay a vote on the measure (a recall against a third Democrat, Dave Hansen, has already failed). Pro-union activists hope to oust more politicians, including Republican Gov. Scott Walker, as soon as they become legally eligible for recall.
Only in Wisconsin is the possibility of overturning the last election being seriously entertained. Recalling state officials has been tried just thirty times in American history, and our state’s current battle accounts for a striking 30% of that total, despite Wisconsin recall requirements being no easier than those of most states. No other state comes close to so many recalls in the same year. California rates a distant second with three recalls in 1995, in a fight instigated by the GOP to punish two Republicans and a Democrat who undermined the party’s narrow, just-won majority in the Assembly by voting to give Democrats the Speakership. With a few twists and turns along the way, Republicans ultimately won.
What makes Wisconsin different? Why aren’t unions threatening to undo election results in other states?

New on RedState – Hate-Filled Former 9/11 Hero Becomes a Pawn of the Wisconsin Left. How Will Republicans Respond?

Calvin Freiburger 9/11, class warfare, collective bargaining, dishonesty, GOP, Left, Redstate, Scott Walker, unions, Wisconsin

My latest RedState post:

As Ann Coulter extensively discussed in her hit books Godless and Guilty, one of liberals’ favorite tricks is to have their lies parroted by spokesmen who their opponents will be too scared to hit back against properly (if at all), for fear of being seen as “mean” toward a victim or national hero. Now, the forces allied against Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s budget repair efforts in Wisconsin have just such an infallible shill of their own.

Patrick Bahnken is a New York City union leader and one of the firefighters who was in the World Trade Center on September 11, and he’s lending his support to leftist PAC We Are Wisconsin (which actually isn’t Wisconsin, by the way) in rather bombastic fashion:

The folks from Wisconsin, when New York was attacked, came and helped us out. We believe that now that the people of Wisconsin are being attacked, it’s important for us to help them out […] I’m a Republican. But what’s happening here is not a political issue, it’s not a Republican vs. Dem, it’s not a union non-union thing. This is an attack on middle-class families across this country […] People have to pick a side. You’re either going to stand up for working families and middle class families, or you’re going to kneel before the rich.

Wisconsinites have been “attacked” just like the Twin Towers were? It’s “kneeling before the rich” to fix our budget with reforms that still leave government workers with a better benefits deal than the private sector, and that are saving the states’ public schools millions of dollars without layoffs, class size changes, or curriculum cuts? And all this according to an alleged Republican?

Read the rest on RedState.

New on RedState – An Open Letter to the Dane County Board of Supervisors Regarding the Smearing of David Prosser

Calvin Freiburger collective bargaining, Dane County, David Prosser, dishonesty, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, hypocrisy, scandal, Scott Walker, unions, Wisconsin, Wisconsin Supreme Court

My latest RedState post:

Dear Dane County Board of Supervisors,

I have several questions regarding the letter twelve of you wrote to Justice David Prosser, in which you ask him to take a leave of absence from the Wisconsin Supreme Court until investigators determine whether or not he strangled Justice Ann Walsh Bradley.

First, the Board of Supervisors is not a law enforcement body, nor does it have any role in the oversight of state government. By what principle or standard does pontificating on the incident fall under the purview of Dane County politicians?

Second, I am sure you are aware that multiple sources report that Justice Bradley was the aggressor, and that Justice Prosser merely raised his hands to defend himself. Have you written a similar letter to Justice Bradley, lecturing her on the serious of workplace violence and asking her to step aside until an investigation reveals whether or not the people of Wisconsin can trust her?

Read the rest on RedState.

The Union Label: Let the Buyer Beware

Calvin Freiburger children, collective bargaining, corruption, dishonesty, education, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, insanity, Left, liberalism, pedophilia, public schools, Scott Walker, sex crimes, unions, Wisconsin

Scott Walker’s detractors are just trying to protect teachers, right?

Wrong:

[I]n June 2010, long before Scott Walker was elected, Milwaukee Public Schools fired 482 teachers–including Megan Sampson, a young educator named an “outstanding first year teacher” by the Wisconsin Council of Teachers of English.

Sampson and 481 other teachers were laid off for two reasons having to do with collective bargaining: First, the collective bargaining agreement allowed the teachers’ union to choose between small reductions in health care benefits and layoffs. “Given the opportunity, of course I would switch to a different [health care] plan to save my job, or the jobs of 10 other teachers,” Sampson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The teachers’ union felt differently. It chose layoffs. 

Second, the collective bargaining agreement guaranteed that teachers would be laid off on the basis of seniority rather than merit (or lack thereof). Therefore, Sampson, and likely a lot of other promising young educators got the axe, while the rest of the teachers, good and bad alike, were protected simply by the amount of time they’d put in.

And “for the children”? That’s crap, too:

A 2004 study by Hofstra University scholar Charol Shakeshaft on the sexual misconduct of public school teachers is a shocking wake-up call that was widely ignored by the public union-friendly press. And even worse, the public teachers unions protected many of the offending teachers and allowed them to quietly transfer to other schools where they victimized more children. “Examples include touching breasts or genitals of students; oral, anal, and vaginal penetration; showing students pictures of a sexual nature; and sexually-related conversations, jokes, or questions directed at students.”

Everyone agrees that the sex scandal in the Catholic Church is a tragedy of immense proportions and the media has done a good job at uncovering the network of cover-ups and lies that harmed children irreparably. But what would you say if I told you that the public school system, which is about the same size as the Catholic Church in America with a school in every parish, has more sexual abuse cases in ten years than the Catholic Church has had in fifty?