Another NEA Moment To Remember: Congressman John Tierney Addresses The NEA Higher Education Conference

Ahhh, the National Education Association!

Sometimes, they just make it so easy...

The Left, wherever it is encountered, be it occupying the capitol rotunda in Madison (celebrating their state senators who skipped the state during the legislative session), or in central London (vandalizing shops, starting fires, assaulting police, defacing war monuments), or Athens (damn near taking it apart brick by brick), or...

Well, wherever they are, they share the Essentials of The Faith:

1. The citizens exist to support the state, and the employees of the state, and there is no limit to what should be extracted from them. Cuts in spending are, by definition, unthinkable because they are immoral.

2. There is no shortfall between receipts and expenditures that are already hard-wired into the state's obligations. That is a fiction created by those Wascawy Wepubwikans.

3. The debt incurred over the past 70 years or so is really not a problem. 14 trillion, 14 schmillion.

4. If more cash is needed, it should simply be confiscated from 'the rich', or 'the corporations'.

5. If anyone disagrees with us, we get to shut down the government, call wildcat strikes, harass people we don't like at their homes, and smash the windows of businesses we don't like. Because we're right.

And...

6. Ethics is for other fools, and Repubwikans. We are exempt from such minor details, because we serve TheGreaterGood, tirelessly working for the triumph of the state over the culture.

So, class, with those points reviewed, let's move to a recent Higher Education Conference staged by the NEA. One keynote speaker, who enthusiastically tells them all what they wish to hear:

By Mary Ellen Flannery
What’s your tax rate, U.S. Congressman John Tierney asked higher education employees at the NEA Higher Education Conference on Saturday. Is it a mere 2.4 percent – like the tech giant Google? Or is it zero — like Boeing or pharmaceutical king Pfizer?
Maybe you received an enormous refund like General Electric?
Probably not.

“We need a fair, progressive tax rate in this country where everybody pays their fair share,” said Tierney, a Democrat from Massachusetts. But we’re not getting it — instead, right-wing politicians are pushing for tax cuts for the very wealthiest, which would be financed through cuts in education at all levels.

“They’ve already started nibbling away at Pell Grants. They’ve already started to nibble away at regulation. Last week, they met in hearings to figure out how to help their friends in for-profit education… They’re more interested in making money for their pals than anything else.”

Let's look at that last sentence more closely: They’re more interested in making money for their pals than anything else.” Hmmm...that's a pretty serious thing to say about someone. That's saying they're ethically challenged, dishonest, ought to know better, behave better, and insist on the same from their colleagues. Hmmm...

John's been lonely of late, since his wife has been in Federal prison, for abetting a tax evasion scheme on behalf of her brother.


Wakefield — March 25, 2011

Patrice Tierney, wife of U.S. Congressman John Tierney, was released from prison last week.

Tierney, 60, was serving a 30-day sentence at a federal women’s prison in Connecticut for tax fraud charges. The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed she was released on last Tuesday, March 15.

“Certainly she is happy to be home,” said Jennifer Flagg, a spokeswoman for Patrice Tierney.

The congressman’s wife will soon begin a five-month home confinement, which was part of her deal with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and will be on probation for two years.

Patrice Tierney, of Salem, pleaded guilty last October to aiding her brother, Robert Eremian, in filing false federal income tax returns. She was sentenced in January by U.S. District Court Judge William Young.

Prosecutors said she was handling her brother’s finances while he was living and doing business in Antigua, where they say Eremian was operating an illegal Internet gambling business. Eremian faces numerous charges, including racketeering and money laundering. Also charged in that racketeering indictment were co-defendants Richard Sullivan of St. John’s, Antigua and Marblehead and Todd Lyons of Beverly.