The battle is now on--the inexorably shrinking tax base of the states vs. the entrenched unions holding Collective Bargaining Agreements with those states. The Federal Government kicked the can down the road into 2010-2011 budget year, by flooding the states with 'emergency cash', but there is a limit, and little stomach in Congress to continue this approach. A few Democrats can do math, and they know this can't continue, either fiscally or electorally.
The day of reckoning is now at hand in this budget year.
Chris Christie of New Jersey appears to have the will to win against the teachers' union. If he does, the job becomes easier for governors and legislatures everywhere else. If he loses...well, he said it himself in his remarks recorded below.
Worth a few minutes of your time to consider. If looking in from outside our borders, this is a pretty succinct explanation of the situation faced by each of our fifty states, and the thousands of local school authorities within the states. There is still a great deal of local control of schools, thankfully, although much less than in previous decades. For this we have Jimmy Carter to thank, who created in US Department of Education as a payoff to the National Education Association for their support in 1976.
The more the Feds intervene, the higher the costs, and lower the quality. Thus, in part, why we have arrived at this uncomfortable impasse. Thanks, Jimmy!
This morning's Fox Business segment with Stuart Varney featured a lively discussion with a teachers union president, attempting to spin the debate her way. After all, that's her job.
Varney didn't let her off the hook, and to the credit of both, all discourse remained civil. The name-calling usually resorted to by the union types (child-hater, education-hater, ignorant, racist) was not present, thankfully.
Will try to locate that video or transcript. It was an illuminating discussion.
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