Black America’s real problem isn’t white racism

[Pernicious]

http://www.debatepolicy.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=6675&stc=1
In the aftermath of the acquittal of George Zimmerman, Eric Holder, Al Sharpton and Ben Jealous of the NAACP are calling on the black community to rise up in national protest.
Yet they know — and Barack Obama, whose silence speaks volumes, knows — nothing is going to happen.

“Stand-Your-Ground” laws in Florida and other states are not going to be repealed. George Zimmerman is not going to be prosecuted for a federal “hate crime” in the death of Trayvon Martin.
The result of all this ginned-up rage that has produced vandalism and violence is simply going to be an ever-deepening racial divide.
Consider the matter of crime and fear of crime.
From listening to cable channels and hearing Holder, Sharpton, Jealous and others, one would think the great threat to black children today emanates from white vigilantes and white cops.
Hence, every black father must have a “conversation” with his son, warning him not to resist or run if pulled over or hassled by a cop.
Make the wrong move, son, and you may be dead is the implication.
But is this the reality in Black America?
When Holder delivered his 2009 “nation-of-cowards” speech blaming racism for racial separation, Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald suggested that our attorney general study his crime statistics.
In New York from January to June 2008, 83 percent of all gun assailants were black, according to witnesses and victims, though blacks were only 24 percent of the population. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 98 percent of all gun assailants. Forty-nine of every 50 muggings and murders in the Big Apple were the work of black or Hispanic criminals.
New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly confirms Mac Donald’s facts. Blacks and Hispanics commit 96 percent of all crimes in the city, he says, but only 85 percent of the stop-and-frisks are of blacks and Hispanics.
And these may involve the kind of pat-downs all of us have had at the airport.
Is stop-and-frisk the work of racist cops in New York, where the crime rate has been driven down to levels unseen in decades?
According to Kelly, a majority of his police force, which he has been able to cut from 41,000 officers to 35,000, is now made up of minorities.
But blacks are also, per capita, the principal victims of crime. Would black fathers prefer their sons to grow up in Chicago, rather than low-crime New York City, with its stop-and-frisk policy?
Fernando Mateo, head of the New York taxicab union, urges his drivers to profile blacks and Hispanics for their own safety: “The God’s honest truth is that 99 percent of the people that are robbing, stealing, killing these drivers are blacks and Hispanics.”
Mateo is what The New York Times would describe as “a black Hispanic” Yet he may be closer to the ‘hood than Holder, who says he was stopped by police when running to a movie — in Georgetown.
Which raises a relevant question. Georgetown is an elitist enclave of a national capital that has been ruled by black mayors for half a century. It’s never had a white mayor.
Is Holder saying we’ve got racist cops in the district where Obama carried 86 percent of the white vote and 97 percent of the black vote? And his son should fear the white cops in Washington, D.C.?
What about interracial crime, white-on-black attacks and the reverse?
After researching the FBI numbers for “Suicide of a Superpower,” this writer concluded: “An analysis of ‘single offender victimization figures’ from the FBI for 2007 finds blacks committed 433,934 crimes against whites, eight times the 55,685 whites committed against blacks. Interracial rape is almost exclusively black on white — with 14,000 assaults on white women by African Americans in 2007. Not one case of a white sexual assault on a black female was found in the FBI study.”
Though blacks are outnumbered 5-to-1 in the population by whites, they commit eight times as many crimes against whites as the reverse. By those 2007 numbers, a black male was 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse.
If interracial crime is the ugliest manifestation of racism, what does this tell us about where racism really resides — in America?
And if the FBI stats for 2007 represent an average year since the Tawana Brawley rape-hoax of 1987, over one-third of a million white women have been sexually assaulted by black males since 1987 — with no visible protest from the civil rights leadership.
Today, 73 percent of all black kids are born out of wedlock. Growing up, these kids drop out, use drugs, are unemployed, commit crimes and are incarcerated at many times the rate of Asians and whites — or Hispanics, who are taking the jobs that used to go to young black Americans.
Are white vigilantes or white cops really Black America’s problem?
Obama seems not to think so. The Rev. Sharpton notwithstanding, he is touting Ray Kelly as a possible chief of homeland security.
http://humanevents.com/2013/07/19/black-americas-real-problem-isnt-white-racism/

[Pernicious]

"When Holder delivered his 2009 “nation-of-cowards” speech blaming racism for racial separation, Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald suggested that our attorney general study his crime statistics.
In New York from January to June 2008, 83 percent of all gun assailants were black, according to witnesses and victims, though blacks were only 24 percent of the population. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 98 percent of all gun assailants. Forty-nine of every 50 muggings and murders in the Big Apple were the work of black or Hispanic criminals.
New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly confirms Mac Donald’s facts. Blacks and Hispanics commit 96 percent of all crimes in the city, he says, but only 85 percent of the stop-and-frisks are of blacks and Hispanics.
And these may involve the kind of pat-downs all of us have had at the airport.
Is stop-and-frisk the work of racist cops in New York, where the crime rate has been driven down to levels unseen in decades?
According to Kelly, a majority of his police force, which he has been able to cut from 41,000 officers to 35,000, is now made up of minorities."

[Gunny]

I think you should post some more words. You know, like completely violate the fair use act?

I ain't reading all that dumbass, racist sh*t. You're a racist.

[Pernicious]

Of the 5 million black and Hispanic students who enter U.S. public high schools each year, approximately (http://www.betterhighschools.org/pubs/documents/HSInTheUS_1210.pdf) 2.2 million will drop out before earning a diploma. Of the 2.8 million who manage to graduate, at least 2.4 million are unable to perform proficiently in mathematics, and at least 2.56 million are unable to read proficiently.



In America's public high schools, 45% of black students and 43% of Hispanics (as compared to 22% of whites) drop out (http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cr_48.htm) before their classes graduate. Dropout rates are especially high in urban areas with large minority populations, including (http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-04-01-cities-suburbs-graduation_N.htm) such academic basket cases as the District of Columbia (57%), Trenton (59% (http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/06/06/School-Budgets-The-Worst-Education-Money-Can-Buy.aspx#page1)), Camden (61.4% (http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/06/06/School-Budgets-The-Worst-Education-Money-Can-Buy.aspx#page1)), Baltimore (65.4%), Cleveland (65.9%), and Detroit (75.1%).

Of those black and Hispanic students who do manage to earn a diploma, a large percentage are functionally illiterate. Black high-school graduates perform, on average, at a level that is four academic years (http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/7057) below that of their white counterparts. Of all graduates in the class of 2011 (http://www.bet.com/news/national/2011/08/23/report-only-13-percent-of-2011-black-graduates-proficient-in-reading.html.html), only 11% of blacks and 15% of Hispanics were proficient in math, as compared to 42% of whites. Similarly, just 13% of blacks and 4% of Hispanics were proficient in reading, versus 40% of whites. As political science professor Lydia Segal notes in her book, Battling Corruption in America’s Public Schools: “It is in cities such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Philadelphia where the largest numbers of children cannot read, write, and compute at acceptable levels and where racial gaps between whites and blacks and Latinos are widest. It is in large cities that minority boys in particular, trapped in poor schools, have the greatest chance of flunking out and getting sucked into the downward spiral of crime and prison.”1 (http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1674#sdfootnote1sym)

These failed schools are run entirely by Democrats and progressives who, as author Jonah Goldberg points out (http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/247989/liberalisms-greatest-failure-jonah-goldberg), have “controlled the large inner-city school systems for generations.” Indeed, the powerful teachers unions overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party and its left-wing agendas; the bureaucrats at the Department of Education overwhelmingly hold progressive political and social views; and the ideological orientation of America's teacher-training colleges is decidedly leftist. All of these factors have combined to create the proverbial train wreck that is public education in the United States today.

Progressives claim that the major problem afflicting U.S. public schools is a lack of funding. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1248), for one, calls for greater “investment (http://hotair.com/archives/2012/01/16/pelosi-nothing-brings-more-money-to-the-treasury-than-education/)” in education at every level. Congressional Progressive Caucus (http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6497) member Maxine Waters (http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1264) laments (http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/maxine-waters-president-must-be-bold) that “educational systems ... are failing” because “we don't really invest” in them. Children's Defense Fund (http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6398) founder Marian Wright Edelman (http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1531) suggests (http://www.sweetspeeches.com/s/7118-peter-haas-can-online-subscriptions-save-the-news-chris-anderson) that increased spending on education today would relieve society of the much greater burden of having to pay the costs associated with incarcerating uneducated prisoners later on: “It's better to invest up front than to invest more as a result of our neglect … Our states at the moment are spending on average three times more per prisoner than per public school pupil. That's about the dumbest investment policy I can think of.” Barack Obama (http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1511), pledging to “continue to make education a national mission,” likewise called for increased education expenditures in his presidential budgets (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-13/obama-requests-increase-in-u-s-education-spending-to-almost-70-billion.html). The highly influential Center for American Progress (http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6709) urges “continued investment (http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/02/education_budget.html) in education in order to grow our economy and rebuild the middle class.” And the Economic Policy Institute (http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7657) has derided (http://epi.3cdn.net/bb997c612d96e34be7_svm6bhj0f.pdf) policymakers at federal, state, and local levels “for not devoting more resources to education.” Not surprisingly, this rhetoric has filtered its way into the public mind; polls (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/09/does-spending-more-on-education-improve-academic-achievement) indicate that many Americans view a lack of resources as one of the chief problems facing public schools.

[Pernicious]

But expenditures are far from niggardly and are rising steeply at the same time that student achievement-test scores have dropped. American taxpayers already spend some $600 billion (http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/09f33pub.pdf) per year on public elementary and secondary schools, with average per-pupil expenditures nationwide currently at an all-time high of $10,905 (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/education/elementary_and_secondary_education_staff_and_finan ces.html)—the latter figure representing a nearly fourfold increase (http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66) (in constant present-day dollars) since 1961. Further, the federal government in recent decades has poured hundreds of billions (http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html) of extra dollars into Title I schools (http://www.brighthubeducation.com/teaching-methods-tips/11105-basics-of-title-1-funds/) targeting mostly poor minority children, with no positive results to show for those financial outlays.

Between 1973 and 2008, the performance of 17-year-old high-schoolers on the math and reading portions of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (a massive, federally mandated initiative that seeks to quantify the academic competence of fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade students) were essentially unchanged (http://nationsreportcard.gov/ltt_2008/ltt0002.asp?subtab_id=Tab_3&tab_id=tab1%23chart). Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) reading scores for the high-school class of 2011 were the lowest on record; the combined reading and math scores of that same class declined (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/sep/14/sat-reading-scores-at-all-time-low/) to their lowest point since 1995. According to the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), an evaluation of 15-year-old students in 34 countries which belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. today ranks (http://teachersunionexposed.com/international.cfm) 25th in math literacy, 17th in scientific literacy, and 14th in reading proficiency. African-Americans have been particularly shortchanged by the public-education system's inadequacies. If black and Hispanic students in the U.S. were counted as self-contained “national” groups, their average PISA reading scores (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/04/the-myth-of-racial-disparities-in-public-school-funding) would rank them 31st and 33rd, respectively, among the 34 OECD nations.

Clearly, dismal academic failure is not a problem that can be solved by merely throwing money at it. Consider, for instance, that the per-pupil cost of a public elementary and high-school education in Washington, DC is an astronomical $16,408 (http://www.tbd.com/articles/2011/05/d-c-schools-have-second-highest-per-pupil-spending-rate-61358.html)—among the highest figures for any city in America and far above the national average—yet DC's public schools are the worst in the country; the city's high-school students score lower (http://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/policyblog/detail/2010-sat-scores-by-state) on the SAT than do their counterparts anywhere else in the United States.

Another academic disaster area, Detroit, spends about $15,945 (http://dailycaller.com/2011/05/10/city-leaders-think-tankers-suggest-various-causes-of-detroits-high-illiteracy-rate/) per public-school pupil. In the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a U.S. Department of Education standardized test, fourth- and eighth-graders at Detroit Public Schools read at a level that is 73% below the national average and register reading scores lower (http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2010/05/nations_report_card_detroit_st.html) than those of students in any other urban school district in the country. Similarly, the reading skills of Detroit's eighth-graders are 60% below the national average, and their math scores in 2011 were the lowest (http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/detroit_students_notch_lowest.html) ever recorded in the 40-year history of the exam.

[Pernicious]

The news is no better in New Jersey's capital city of Trenton, whose population is more than 80% (http://www.city-data.com/city/Trenton-New-Jersey.html) black and Hispanic. With expenditures of $20,663 per public-school pupil, the citywide high-school graduation rate is a mere 41%. And Camden, New Jersey, where nearly 90% (http://www.city-data.com/city/Camden-New-Jersey.html) of all residents are black or Hispanic, spends an astounding $23,356 per pupil, but only 38.6% of them ever obtain a high-school diploma. These enormous expenditures on the education of nonwhite minorities are by no means unusual. The per-pupil spending (http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/04/the-myth-of-racial-disparities-in-public-school-funding) on black public-school students nationwide is actually 5% higher than the corresponding figure for white students, while the figure for Hispanic students is 1% higher than for whites.

There is compelling evidence at the state level, as well, that public spending on education is not correlated with student achievement. Indeed, numerous states in the Northeast spend between $14,000 (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0262.pdf)and $19,000 (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0262.pdf) on the education of each public-school student, yet those pupils invariably register SAT scores that are below (http://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/policyblog/detail/2010-sat-scores-by-state)—and in some cases far below (http://www.datamasher.org/mash-ups/spent-student-and-sat-scores)—the national median.

The failure of public schools to properly educate American students—particularly nonwhite minorities—can be attributed largely to the policies and priorities of the teachers unions. Most significant are the 3.2 million-member (http://www.nea.org/home/1594.htm) National Education Association (NEA (http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7428)) and the 1.5 million-member (http://www.aft.org/about/) member American Federation of Teachers (AFT (http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7513)). Devoted to promoting all manner of left-wing political agendas, these unions rank among the most powerful political forces in the United States.[2] Fortune magazine routinely ranks (http://teachersunionexposed.com/dues.cfm) the NEA among the top 15 in its “Washington's Power 25” list of organizations that wield the greatest political influence in the American legislative system.[3]

The NEA derives most (http://livepage.apple.com/) of its operating funds from the member dues that, in almost every U.S. state, are deducted automatically from teachers' salaries. In 2010, these dues accounted for $357.5 million (http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments/2010/530/115/2010-530115260-07503897-9O.pdf) of the union's $376.5 million in total revenues. Because member dues constitute the very lifeblood of the teachers unions, the unions have made it enormously expensive and time-consuming to get a tenured teacher fired (http://teachersunionexposed.com/protecting.cfm) for incompetence. In New York City, for instance, the process of eliminating a single bad teacher costs taxpayers, on average, $163,142 (http://teachersunionexposed.com/protecting.cfm). In New York State overall, the average is $128,941 (http://teachersunionexposed.com/protecting.cfm). In Illinois, a school district must spend an average of $219,504 in legal fees alone (http://teachersunionexposed.com/protecting.cfm) to move a termination case beyond all the union-created obstacles. Ultimately, the unions strive to keep as many teachers as possible on the payroll—including those who are wholly ineffective—so as to continue to collect their union dues which, in turn, can be applied to political ends. Even in school districts where students perform far below the academic norm for their grade levels, and where dropout rates are astronomically high, scarcely one in a thousand teachers is ever dismissed in any given year.

In most states, teachers are automatically awarded tenure after only a few years on the job. The Los Angeles Times, for example, reports (http://teachersunionexposed.com/protecting.cfm) that fewer than 2% (http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/20/local/la-me-teacher-tenure20-2009dec20) of that city's schoolteachers are denied tenure during the two-year probationary period after they are hired. Once tenured, even the most ineffective and incompetent instructors can have long and relatively lucrative careers (http://teachersunionexposed.com/protecting.cfm) in the classroom if they wish to stay in the field of education. As one Los Angeles union representative said (http://teachersunionexposed.com/protecting.cfm) in 2003: “If I’m representing them [tenured teachers], it’s impossible to get them out. It’s impossible. Unless they commit a lewd act.” This was not hyperbole; between 1995 and 2005, just 112 of the 43,000 tenured teachers in Los Angeles lost their jobs (http://teachersunionexposed.com/protecting.cfm), even though 49% of the students in their school district failed to graduate from high school.

[Pernicious]

The story has been much the same elsewhere. In the 2006-2007 school year, New York City (http://teachersunionexposed.com/protecting.cfm) fired only 10 of its 55,000 tenured teachers, even though a mere 19% (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/education/new-york-city-student-testing-over-the-past-decade.html) of the city's eighth graders could read with proficiency. Between 2005 and 2008 in Chicago (http://teachersunionexposed.com/protecting.cfm), where only 28.5% of 11th graders demonstrated academic competency on Illinois' standardized tests, a mere 0.1% of teachers were dismissed for performance-related reasons. And during a ten-year period in Newark, New Jersey (http://teachersunionexposed.com/protecting.cfm), where the high-school graduation rate was just 30.6%, only one out of every 3,000 tenured teachers in the city was terminated in any given year.

The teachers unions' selfish priorities made bold headlines in 2010, when it was reported that New York City had established a number of so-called “rubber rooms (http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/84076),” formally called Temporary R (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/education/29rubber.html)eassignment Centers (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/education/29rubber.html), where hundreds of public-school teachers who had been accused of gross incompetence or misconduct sat idly each day, drawing their full salaries (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/nyregion/16rubber.html) (and thus paying their full union dues) while waiting for their cases to be reviewed. Some teachers (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/nyregion/16rubber.html) had been there for several years (http://www.wnyc.org/articles/wnyc-news/2010/apr/14/life-in-the-rubber-room-where-suspended-teachers-await-due-process/). The city not only spent (http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/84076) between $35 million and $65 million annually on their salaries and benefits, but also had to bear the additional costs (http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/84076) of hiring substitutes to teach the classes once taught by the idle instructors, renting space wherein the reassignment centers could be housed, and employing security guards to monitor those facilities. Under the heat of public outcry, these “rubber rooms”—whose name derived (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/education/29rubber.html) from the notion that it would be difficult not to go mad after spending day after day in a spartan, windowless room where there was nothing to do—were finally shut down (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/nyregion/16rubber.html) in the fall of 2010.

The closure of the rubber rooms, however, did nothing to address the even costlier Absent Teacher Reserve (http://teachersunionexposed.com/bargaining.cfm) (ATR) pool which, to this day, consists of some 1,800 New York City teachers (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575468161974297870.html?m od=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEForthNews) who lost their jobs not because they were accused of incompetence or wrongdoing, but because of budget cuts and school closures. Though these instructors are mostly inactive, they can be called upon (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575468161974297870.html?m od=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEForthNews) periodically to substitute or do other jobs in local schools. In the meantime, they continue to draw their full salaries (averaging $82,000 (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575468161974297870.html?m od=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEForthNews) per year) and collectively cost the city more than $100 million annually—generally while making very little effort to seek full-time employment. According to the Department of Education (DOE), 59% (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575468161974297870.html?m od=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEForthNews) of the teachers in the ATR pool have neither applied for any jobs through the DOE's job-recruitment system nor attended any job fairs. Some of them have been in the pool for several years (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704206804575468161974297870.html?m od=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEForthNews).

In addition to aggressively defending the rights of incompetent instructors, the teachers unions have likewise objected (http://teachersunionexposed.com/meritpay.cfm) to merit-pay proposals that would reward good teachers and punish bad ones. When Florida legislators in 2009 called for a merit-pay system, the head of the state teachers union accused (http://teachersunionexposed.com/meritpay.cfm) the lawmakers of “punishing and scapegoating teachers ... and creating more chaos in Florida public schools.” When Governor Chris Christie suggested a similar arrangement for his state in 2010, New Jersey teachers unions asserted (http://teachersunionexposed.com/meritpay.cfm) that “his effort is intentionally designed to demean and defund public education.” In Chicago, union officials have argued (http://teachersunionexposed.com/meritpay.cfm) that “merit-pay programs can [undesirably] narrow curricula by encouraging teachers to focus on testing.” And after Florida passed a merit-pay law in 2011, the Florida teachers union filed suit (http://www.northescambia.com/?p=67913) against the state, contending that the new legislation violated the right to collectively bargain for wages, contracts, and promotions that was guaranteed in the state constitution.

The teachers unions likewise oppose voucher programs that would enable the parents of children who attend failing, inner-city public schools, to send their youngsters instead to private schools where they might actually succeed academically. Progressive Democratic politicians, who derive so much financial support from the teachers unions, oppose voucher programs as well.[4]

[Pernicious]

While millions of impoverished black and Hispanic youngsters are herded into substandard urban classrooms where they learn little or nothing, and where their tragic destinies of poverty and underachievement are set in motion, the 266,000 (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/education/elementary_and_secondary_education_staff_and_finan ces.html) people who work in public elementary and secondary school administrative posts are very well compensated for their efforts. These individuals earn, on average, some $84,000 (http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos007.htm) apiece in annual salaries (not including healthcare and pension benefits). School superintendents are the highest paid of all administrators, earning (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/education/elementary_and_secondary_education_staff_and_finan ces.html) an average of $161,992 per year; deputy and associate superintendents earn $138,061. Classroom teachers, by contrast, are paid an average of $54,220 (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/education/elementary_and_secondary_education_staff_and_finan ces.html).

Unfortunately for American taxpayers, public-school administrators' ride aboard the gravy train does not come to an end when they stop working. Indeed, many thousands of former administrators collect more money during retirement than most people earn during their entire working careers. In California alone, the number of education professionals receiving $100,000-plus annual pensions rose by 650% (http://www.sacbee.com/2011/06/26/v-print/3727843/six-figure-pensions-soar-for-california.html) (from 700 to 5,400) between 2005 and 2011.


NOTES:
[1] Lydia G. Segal, Battling Corruption in America’s Public Schools (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. xix

[2] The NEA, for instance, employs a larger number (http://teachersunionexposed.com/blocking.cfm) of political organizers than the Republican and Democratic National Committees combined. Key among those organizers is a corps of directors, known collectively as UniServ, who assist (http://teachersunionexposed.com/blocking.cfm) local teachers unions with collective bargaining and the dissemination of the NEA's political messages. UniServ has consistently been the NEA's most expensive budget item (http://teachersunionexposed.com/blocking.cfm).

[3] The NEA has earned that rating, in large measure, by making almost $31 million in campaign contributions to political candidates since (http://teachersunionexposed.com/dues.cfm) the early 1990s. The AFT, for its part, has given more than $28 million (http://teachersunionexposed.com/dues.cfm) to its own favored candidates. And these figures do not include (http://teachersunionexposed.com/dues.cfm) expenditures on such politically oriented initiatives as television ads or get-out-the-vote efforts. Of the $59 million in combined NEA and AFT campaign donations, more than $56 million (http://teachersunionexposed.com/dues.cfm) (i.e., 95%) has gone to Democrats. This imbalance reflects only the political leanings of the union leaders, not the rank-and-file schoolteachers. Indeed, just 45% (http://teachersunionexposed.com/dues.cfm) of public-school teachers are registered Democrats, and more NEA members identify themselves (http://teachersunionexposed.com/dues.cfm) as conservatives (27%) than as liberals (21%).

[4] That opposition, however, does not prevent leftist Democrats from sending their own children to expensive private schools. When former Vice President Al Gore (http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2140), for example, was asked why he opposed school vouchers for black children while sending his own son to a private school, he said: “If I had a child in an inner-city school, I would probably be for vouchers too.” Barack Obama, another longtime opponent of voucher programs, has likewise sent his two daughters to elite private schools.

[jimnyc]

Pern - I can't really tell for sure from what you posted the source, but seems from Wikipedia. At any rate, any subject matter aside, we should only be posting a paragraph to 3, depending, and link to the rest of the article. Thanks :)

[Pernicious]

Pern - I can't really tell for sure from what you posted the source, but seems from Wikipedia. At any rate, any subject matter aside, we should only be posting a paragraph to 3, depending, and link to the rest of the article. Thanks :)When searching for solutions to problems, sharing concepts and observations (W. Edwards Demming 8D) is a proven method to rational decision making. Would you rather the members be able to view those or do you prefer we only study the vulgarity of some? Your site, your choice. Link:http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1674
Thanks for letting me express my point of view.






?

[jimnyc]

When searching for solutions to problems, sharing concepts and observations (W. Edwards Demming 8D) is a proven method to rational decision making. Would you rather the members be able to view those or do you prefer we only study the vulgarity of some? Your site, your choice. Link:http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1674
Thanks for letting me express my point of view.

I am unsure if that is a question to me, or if something part of what you're linking to? If in reference to my post about only posting so much - that's kinda law unfortunately. We're allowed to post news articles and stories, for non-profit or discussion, and re-post a small amount and link to and give credit for the original source. Anything short of that, or the posting of entire articles, "could" end up leading to a lawsuit. It hasn't happened yet, but I was contacted by a paper out of Dallas once, with a request to remove an article that was posted in it's entirety. It happens. Better to be safe and follow the law than have to spend money to defend a dumb lawsuit.