Control

Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D, CA) wants the Federal government to pay a significant fraction of public school teachers’ salaries.

What a terrible idea.

The Federal government paying a significant fraction of public school teachers’ salaries means Federal government control of our public schools. Those schools are in enough trouble; we don’t need the Feds getting in the way, also.

Aside from that, this is just another Progressive-Democratic Party attempt to grab our money, this time to deny it to our heirs.  Again.

Apart from both of those, this is another example of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s contributing to the erosion of our families, illustrated by this claim of Harris’:

Our country’s success is a product of the two groups who raise our children: parents and teachers. We are not paying our teachers their value[.]

Teachers help raise our children? No, that’s the exclusive province of parents; schools are not ex loco parentis child care centers, and teachers must stop being babysitters and do the only thing they’re hired to do: teach.

Work…Works

Sam Adolphsen, Foundation for Government Accountability’s Vice President of Executive Affairs, writing for Fox Business, commented on that in a piece about Medicaid’s work requirement in Arkansas—about which Progressive-Democrats in Congress are in an uproar.

Those Progressive-Democrats have complained that work requirements

“threaten[]” Americans…work [is] a “restrictive condition.”

These politicians of the Left ignore two things. One is the trivial one: no one is forcing anyone to work; the only “restriction” is that, in order to get any of Arkansas’ OPM, recipients must go to work in Arkansas or make a good faith effort to do so.

The other thing is the critical item in the affair.

Since the requirement was implemented, thousands of adults have left the welfare program.

…when people go back to work after work requirements are implemented, their incomes double or triple in just a year or two.

And this fallout from that second thing:

Getting these able-bodied adults back to work also frees up resources for the truly needy—the very people that the Medicaid program was designed to help.

It also increases Arkansas’ tax collections that go to the State’s Medicaid program.

Here’s where Adolphsen missed the mark, though.  He wrote

Why are Democrats so against work?

It’s an indication of how out of touch these progressive leaders are with everyday Americans.

No, Progressive-Democrats are the smartest kids on the block—just ask them.  They know what they’re doing with their objections to imposing a measure of personal responsibility on welfare recipients, personal responsibility that brings with it personal prosperity.

Those folks getting work and raising their standard of living aren’t actual human beings; they’re just votes spilling out of the Progressive-Democrats’ welfare box.

No National Defense for You

Many Microsoft employees don’t want the United States to be able to defend itself—to defend its citizens and resident aliens.

More than 150 Microsoft employees signed a letter demanding the tech giant cancel a $480 million contract to build a HoloLens for the Pentagon, saying they “refuse to create technology for warfare and oppression.”

And

We are alarmed that Microsoft is working to provide weapons technology to the US military, helping one country’s government “increase lethality” using tools we built. We did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used[.]

Never mind their ideology that our nation should not be allowed to have the tools necessary for our defense, their arrogance—employees demanding veto authority over their boss’ decision—is itself unacceptable.

These Precious Ones should be terminated for cause over their refusal to work the contract.  Their insubordinate arrogance is just confirmation of the need for Microsoft to see the backs of them.

One more thing: if this is the best Silicon Valley—or the Redmond-Seattle environs—can do for employees, Microsoft should give serious thought to relocating.

Religious Freedom

Germany doesn’t appear to have the same strong belief in it that Americans (or most of us, anyway) do.  The Federal Labor Court has objected to a Catholic clinic terminating a doctor because he violated Church teachings, specifically, he both divorced and then remarried.

The doctor insisted—successfully, it turns out—that he was fired for being Catholic; colleagues of different faiths could divorce and remarry without consequence.

Never mind that the clinic was Catholic and the Catholic doctor violated the clinic’s Catholic requirements, requirements it could not impose on its non-Catholic employees without imposing on their religious freedom.  The situation illustrates the complexities of religious freedom in the work place, but if this ruling is allowed to stand, it will have serious implications for the employability of persons whose religious faith—or agnosticism or atheism—is different from the employer’s religious tenets—or agnosticism or atheism.

The Teachers Union Strike in LA

The subhead on Monday’s Wall Street Journal article on the United Teachers Los Angeles union strike against the Los Angeles Unified School District says it all.

Nearly one in five LA public school students attends charters unaffected by the strike; union wants a cap on them

Herein lies one more proof of the disingenuousness of the UTLA. While the UTLA is striking, demanding a cap on the number of charter schools (and money, money, money), all the while holding Los Angeles’ public school students hostage to their demand, the charters are open and actually educating their students.

With its strike demand, the UTLA is ignoring the enormous opportunity that should be available for the children of LA: the two systems of schools could complement each other.  Instead, the union has chosen to present the situation as a zero-sum game. The contrast couldn’t be sharper.

It’s no wonder the union wants to eliminate what it sees as its competition; it can’t stand the clarity the charters’ existence and performance provide in the union’s zero sum.

Cynically, the union’s demand for money, is nothing more than what unions do; although, here it’s also a smoke screen.

***

In the end, the LAUSD caved completely. In addition to a 6% pay raise and more than $400 million in additional money to be spent on the union, there’s this:

Union President Alex Caputo-Pearl said the agreement goes beyond contractual issues and addresses “having accountability and regulations on charter schools,” including how to give traditional schools a bigger say when charters are given space on their campuses.

Never mind that that space was available to the charters because the union’s schools weren’t using it. No, contract matters, as Caputo-Pearl just confessed, had little to do with the union’s strike. Now they have near-veto say on what their competition will be allowed to do. That’s to the great harm of the children this union has pretended to want to protect.