FDR and Union Tyranny

FDR and Union Tyranny

As a former, retired, teacher union member whose father was a member of a company union, I don’t in the least feel hypocritical in opposing the actions of Wisconsin teachers. Bottom line is, they’re wrong, in the extreme.

When I began as a public school English teacher in the early 70′s in suburban Long Island, I had no intention of joining either the local or state unions. Even then, the state union was decidedly liberal and, in fact, there was a movement afoot to expunge the word, “union,” in favor of “association” in order to preserve a sense of teacher professionalism.

“Union” won out in that debate, not that it mattered since the umbrella organization, the National Education Association, the NEA, which partners with the American Federation of Teachers, the AFT, is a de facto union, with 3.2 million members.

In any event, during my first year I refused on principle to join the local but succumbed in my second after repeated interruptions of my class by an importuning union rep. As it turned out, I subsequently learned that the district administration, in conjunction with the union, frowned on those who didn’t join and if I hadn’t signed on I may not have had a job my third year.

With that as preface and introduction to the current education crisis in Madison, Wisconsin and elsewhere, it’s been more than disquieting to discover that I was at least in partial agreement with the greatest liberal icon in the history of liberal icons, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Not that FDR was opposed to unions or collective bargaining–far from it–but he knew the inherent dangers of public employees negotiating with governments via union representatives.

As he said, ”All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public-personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations:” http://tiny.cc/pnwwf

Apparently, today’s public employee unions never got that message as to the “insurmountable limitations” and the impossibility of such situations. Nor can they seem to grasp FDR’s reminder that, in collective bargaining with governments, “The employer is the whole people,” meaning that, seated on the other side of the negotiating table, are not representatives of some greedy corporation but the American public.

Extrapolating from Roosevelt’s words, when public employee unions demonstrate and agitate and demand, they are demonstrating and agitating against “the whole people” and their demands are not being made against a mayor, governor, or president but rather against every taxpayer.

President Ronald Reagan . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3744)

Some Political People What-Ifs

Some Political People What-Ifs

Some random 2011 thoughts on various administration personages and on what might have been:

WHAT IF Barack Hussein Obama had never met and wed Michelle Lavaughn Robinson? Would he have settled for a white girl like his mother and devoted his life to promoting Marxist principles like his father? Or would he have devoted his life to becoming president of the United States, promoting–and implementing–Marxist principles?

WHAT IF the president’s parents had never met, copulated, and wed, or if his mother had rejected his advances and marriage proposal because he was already a bigamist? Since she did seem to have a thing for Muslim men, what if Stanley Ann Dunham had married a Muslim other than Barack Hussein Obama Senior and never conceived Barry?

WHAT IF Hillary Clinton actually suffered from PMDD, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=3293)

Are We Better Off Today than We Were Two Years Ago?

Are We Better Off Today than We Were Two Years Ago?

The Great Communicator, the nation’s last true conservative president, Ronaldus Magnus, Ronald Wilson Reagan, won the election of 1980 against Jimmy Carter in large part because he asked the nation a probing question in their last televised debate.

Reagan posed the question that cut to the essence of what Carter thought was the electorate’s malaise: ”Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

As Kyle-Anne Shiver recounts, ”That simple Reagan question reached right into my heart of hearts and transformed me from a poppycock-believing, hippie liberal to patriotic conservative in one fell swoop.”

Indeed, it was one helluva question, one which Shiver suggests should be asked over and over by Republican House and Senate candidates during these last few weeks before Election Day.

As Shiver wrote on PajamasMedia.com, ”I would start putting that same slogan on every billboard and on every post in every town square in America. I would print millions of those ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago?’ posters for folks to put in their front yards. I would make a gazillion bumper stickers and T-shirts and coffee mugs and I would open every single speech on the campaign trail with that question: ” http://tiny.cc/fazc1

It was a question that energized the Reagan faithful, the Reagan Democrats, and the electorate as a whole to cast their votes for a former actor and governor, the nouveau leader of the conservative movement since most people didn’t feel they were better off.

That momentous election led to a landslide four years later, to eight years of almost unprecedented economic growth, a rebuilding of our national defense forces, and of regaining our position in the world. Most importantly it led to a much-needed revival of American pride and spirit when we could once again envision our destiny as that shining city on the hill, that beacon of hope for all the world to see and emulate.

To paraphrase the old Virginia Slims commercial, “We’ve come a long way, Baby” in the 21 years since Reagan left office but not along the right way. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=2017)

Hope and Failure in America's Schools, Part One

Hope and Failure in America's Schools, Part One

. . . Three-quarters of the way through the 2009-2010 school year, schools are very much in the news, both in the good news category and the not so good.

Today, from the Good News Department offering hope for the future:

Virginia Senate Votes to Expand Charter Schools: Much to the chagrin of the National Education Association, President Obama recently endorsed the idea of charter schools as a way of improving and reforming education. The new Republican governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, favors charters as well and now Virginia’s Democratic-controlled Senate is on record as supporting their expansion following approval by the Republican-controlled House of Delegates. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1557)

Upside-Down, Inside-Out

Upside-Down, Inside-Out
Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you–if you’re naïve and stupid.

Those may not be all the original words of Sinatra’s “Young at Heart,” but they’re more realistic than Frankie’s.

Maybe it’s the age–or just my age–but I’ve been getting uneasy, queasy feelings, vibes in the current vernacular, that believing our nation will always be the great nation in which we grew up is wishful thinking, a fairy tale if you will.

Do forgive the purplish prose but I also firmly believe that we collectively stand at a precipice, a hazardous cliff overhanging an unforgiving plunge into chaotic change, into changes that threaten to forever alter who Americans are and what America is.

We were warned of this by candidate Obama, of change we could believe in, and it’s in progress although it may not be the warm and fuzzy change we were misled to anticipate.

As Harry Reid dishes out unprecedented bribes to win senatorial votes, as China gives fair warning that the world’s financial well is running dry, as the president’s new bff’s abuse and ridicule him, Obama blithely keeps marching on with his permutation campaign.

The essence of Obama’s change is that we now seem to be living in a world not merely turned upside-down but inside out.

Previous absolutes are given a relativistic spin, traditional values and understandings are reduced to the level of antiquated absurdities, America is gradually being transmogrified into just one more nation in the United Nations’ mob rather than Ronald Reagan’s shining city on the hill.

It’s worthwhile to read and consider Reagan’s words in his Farewell Address: “In my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, . . .

(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1383