Simpletons, Stooges, and Shysters

By William L. Garvin

President Ronald Reagan said the trouble with liberal friends “…is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so.” In a world of Alinsky community organizing acolytes, they not only “know what isn’t so,” they go out of their way to deliberately distort what is!

For example, when IAFF Local 311 Firefighters Union sent out its call to membership to disrupt Governor Sarah Palin’s speech in Madison, Wisconsin, they referred to her as a “corporate shill.” Their clarion shibboleth: “Let’s show ‘em how we really feel about big corporations passing the tax burden on to the rest of us.” Only in Liberal-Logic-Land does this hypocrisy pass the smell test. Keep in mind that this is a government union of government employees that is supported entirely by the “tax burden” on the private sector. It is only in Liberal-Logic-Land that “corporate shill” and “Sarah Palin” can exist in the same sentence because it requires a total suspension of reality. It wasn’t Tina Fey that took on and defeated Big Oil, crony capitalism, and the Corrupt Bastards Club in Alaska…that was Governor Palin who did and who put Alaska’s budget in the black! Do at least a tiny bit of research, Pinocchio!

Another simplistic strategy of socialist stooges is to rephrase arguments to imaginary positions which their opponents do not hold. Naturally, that artificial argument is easily defeated. For instance, government unions have recently been criticized for their extravagant pension plans and for contributing over ninety percent of their political contributions to Democrats against the wishes of some of their conservative/independent members. Recklessly disregarding the truth, the dedicated Alinskyite begins to whine “when did teachers, firefighters, public service employees and police personnel become the enemy?” They aren’t now, they never were, but since you bring it up, let’s take a closer look.

Estimates are that New York City spends $65 million each year reassigning teachers to the infamous “rubber rooms” where they have no assigned duties while awaiting disciplinary action. Sometimes they wait for years…at full salary. In California, according to the Los Angeles Times, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing has a backlog of 12,600 cases for revocation. That’s a three-year workload according to the state auditor’s report. One teacher was suspected of showing students pornographic materials in 2008 but the agency did not even request police reports until 2010! Justice delayed is justice denied. The teacher went to work in another school and the case was closed with no action.
The Wall Street Journal reported: “It’s not impossible to get rid of bad teachers, but it’s extremely hard and expensive. A report this month in LA Weekly noted that in the past decade the Los Angeles Unified School District “spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district’s 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance.“ The paper also reported that 32 underperforming teachers were initially targeted for removal “but then secretly paid $50,000 by the district, on average, to leave without a fight.”" In Illinois, it costs approximately $219,000 for a school district to fire an incompetent teacher.
The State of California also conducted an audit of the Mule Creek State Prison. They found that teachers spent as little as 33 hours inside the prison even though they were paid for forty. According to the Associated Press, taxpayers paid $272,900 for time that 66 employees did not work during the three-month audit period. That costs out to $1.1 million in overpayments each year for that prison alone. Mule Creek is only one of thirty-three prisons in the state. It is also the only prison to require employees to clock in and out; therefore it is “difficult” to say if the practice is widespread. Union contracts prohibit corrections officials from keeping track of actual hours worked! Also, according to the AP report and the Department, none of the employees have been disciplined nor has the Department tried to recoup the overpayments.

As Sgt. Joe Friday used to say: “Just the facts, ma’am.” They are indeed “such stubborn things.” When good teachers are paid the same as incompetent teachers, it’s a shame. When unions protect incompetence, it’s a disgrace.