Tag Archives: jobs

The Teachers Union Strike in LA

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Union Greed Realized

Posted on by
Reply

Recall that the United Teachers Los Angeles union threatened to strike this week if they didn’t get their way.  Now they’ve gone ahead and done it, putting the education (such as it is in this district’s public—NTLA-manned—schools) of 500,000 children at risk.  For instance, at the Third Street Elementary School

[a] notice plastered on the school gate said that students will be gathered in the auditorium and the outdoor lunch pavilion area, instead of classrooms, during the strike, and overseen by administrators and teacher assistants.

No education allowed here, per the NTLA.

Recall the issue central to the union’s demands—the end of competition from charter schools that operate in the same district, sometimes in the same school buildings, and that attract students, who then do much better in school and get much better educations.

The union…cast the strike as a broader referendum on the growth of charter schools, which don’t have to follow some public-school regulations and whose teachers are largely nonunionized. Charter schools aren’t part of the contract bargaining….

In other words, charter school teachers have much greater flexibility in how they teach their students, and they aren’t bound by union demands regarding employment and employment parameters.  Charter school teachers also are regulated by the State rather than the union local jurisdictions.

Building a Wall

Posted on by
Reply

President Donald Trump has floated the idea that he could declare a national emergency and use the military to build a wall.  I’m not convinced that’s necessary.

The Navy’s Seabees, the Army’s Corps of Engineers, and the USAF’s Civil Engineers always can use an operational exercise in construction.

The Party of Expansionist, Acquisitive Government

Posted on by
Reply

That’s what we can see made plain in the incoming Congress’ House of Representatives.  Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman (D, NJ) had this on her Progressive-Democratic Party’s plans:

There are dozens of measures…that have been languishing with Republicans at the helm for years, and I expect to see many of them finally come to the floor under Democratic leadership[.]

Plans like rolling back the just enacted tax cuts and preventing the individual income tax cuts from becoming permanent.  Because the Progressive-Democrats know more about how to spend our money than we do.

Plans like Medicare for all, free education for all—paid for by raising those taxes.  So much for “free.”

Guaranteed jobs, especially, “green” jobs—at the Progressive-Democrat’s mandated minimum wage because, like all workers, “green” workers are just too stupid to be trusted with freely negotiating their own compensation package.  And hired by whom?  Not so much a free economy employer; “greenery” isn’t competitive, so the Progressive-Democrats intend to centrally plan our energy economy and require greenery along with subsidizing it.  That can be expected to work as well as the Progressive-Democrats’ centrally planned health economy.

Oh, and they want to deepen the central planning on that: as part of their “Medicare for all” bit, they intend for Uncle Sugar to be sole dispenser of and sole payer for each citizen’s (and illegal alien’s) health care.

Block border security by blocking any wall and by eliminating Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  And hamstringing US Customs & Border Protection generally.

It’s going to be an ugly, wasted two years with no serious legislation coming out of the House—only the Party’s nakedly socialist claptrap.  Socialist and Government-run because, these worthies insist, the average American is inadequate to the task of his democratic duty.

Another Outcome of Supreme Court’s Abuse of the Takings Clause

Posted on by
Reply

Recall the Takings Clause of our 5th Amendment:

nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Now recall three critical Takings cases decided by the Supreme Court.  Berman v Parker was a 1954 case in which the Supremes explicitly rewrote that clause to say for public purpose, not use.  Hawaii Housing Authority v Midkiff was a 1984 case in which the Supremes ruled that it was perfectly fine for a State government to take private property away from a private enterprise and give it to private citizens who leased the property from the business.  Kelo v City of New London was a 2005 case in which the Supremes said it was jake for a State government to seize a private citizen’s property and give it to a private business for that business’ purposes.

That last shameful ruling led to a large number of States passing their own laws or State Constitutional amendments severely restricting the conditions under which eminent domain can be used.  The Federal government’s power as distorted by the Supremes in that trio of cases, however, remains the law.

This brings me to New York and New York City and amazon.com’s HQ2 move into the city.

In their bid for Amazon.com Inc’s second headquarters, New York City and state officials dangled prime real estate at the tech giant and offered to use eminent domain to scoop up any necessary properties for a campus, newly disclosed documents revealed Monday night.

These worthies planned the theft confiscation eminent domain seizures in four areas: Midtown West, lower Manhattan, along the Brooklyn waterfront, and Long Island City.

Such an offer wouldn’t have been possible except in the aftermath of Berman, Midkiff, and Kelo.  This is the extent of the destruction of private property the Supremes have wrought.