The State Of Wisconsin v. The Public Employee Unions

The Chicago Tribune reports that Gov. Walker has the votes needed to end collective bargaining between the government and public employee unions.

The unions, especially the NEA, are not amused, and use Wisconsin as a case in point about those gweedy, wascawy Wepubwikans who are starving chilluns and depriving them of their futures.

Wisconsin, for example, faces a two-year budget deficit of $3.6 billion. Ellsworth Community School District in Wisconsin is slashing 24 of its 150 school personnel positions to save $1.1 million.

One of the educators not returning next year is Shelly Moore, a 13-year English and drama high school teacher at Ellsworth Community High School. Moore teaches grades 9-12. She also is the school’s only Advanced Placement instructor. Moore took her message to Congress last week, reminding lawmakers that investing in education is the right thing to do for students, communities and the nation.

“This is devastating,” said Moore. “How am I going to look at my students in the eye and tell them I won’t be here next year to help them? In all my years teaching, I’ve never seen so little regard for our future. We have to put students first.”

Ms. More's tale of woe is further detailed here.

OS keeps looking for NEA's proposals to stop the arterial bleeding of red ink from both state and federal budgets, and only encounters these stories of heartbroken union members.

They also spend a lot of time and energy going after any alternatives to the 'single-provider' government system.

Hmmm....

NEA and their state organizations have always been the frontline troops for the left edge of the Democrat Party. They helped push Jimmy Carter over the top in 1976, and were rewarded with the Department of Education, which has become a vast black hole of increasing expenditure and decaying returns. Any program, anywhere, anytime, that increased the cost, size and reach of government was loudly supported, and still is. Their support of Obama was breathless.

Obama kept his promise, and mainlined boatloads of borrowed cash into the states to prop up the unsustainable system, gambling (literally, putting the future wealth of the nation on the table) that this would generate enough votes to consolidate control in 2010, when he could really really really get on with the borrowing and spending to set up for 2012, when he really really really get on with the borrowing and spending from 2013 onwards.

Reality has finally set in, just a bit, and the painful cuts (long overdue) are now just being proposed. The worst is ahead.

Now, Himself is finally giving a news conference, talking about having 'an adult conversation', a 'full open debate with the American people', etc. etc. Is this the same guy who in 2009 was holding public speeches about letting the Republicans join in, as long as they 'rode in the back of the bus'?

It's time, long past time, to send the NEA on its way, for the counties and townships and states to take back their school systems from the Federal government and the unions. And, if the unions remain imbedded at the state level, it's time for the localities to take their schools back.

The current system has failed. It began failing in earnest in the 1970's, with the rise of the NEA. It is time to change course.

Now.

Or, alternatively, we could just print up a whole-lotta moh' hot money, and helicopter it down to the states. That's what The Left tells is the answer. That's what they've always told us.