An Untimely Death

As awful as our union leadership is, they're our fault because the overwhelming majority of us can't be bothered to mark an X, lick an envelope, and drop it in a mailbox. And with all the bad things I say about them, they are at least better than nothing. Nothing is likely what we will have if Friedrichs becomes law.

I spend a good part of every year trying to collect for our local's Sunshine Fund. We collect 15 bucks a head. With that, we buy gifts for retirees, do lunches, and sometimes buy shirts for members. Some people won't pay. They tell me they have phone bills, electric bills, and all sorts of inconvenient things that, of course, pretty much everyone has. I will continue to pay the union, if we have one, but I dread the possibility of having to go around and ask people to contribute a thousand bucks a year.

And honestly, I don't know whether I would ask. Even if I pay myself, should I bust my ass trying to raise money for Michael Mulgrew to sit at 52 Broadway and have someone write emails he signs telling us how wonderful things are? Should I actively enable all the loyalty oath signers who we pay because they've shown an unshakable faith in all the nonsense our union has supported?  Don't they include charter schools, colocations, mayoral control, two-tier due process, among their Great Victories?

Unfortunately, Friedrichs transcends leadership. I will pay 15 bucks for pretty much any half-decent cause in my building, and so will a lot of others, but when the ante rises to a thousand bucks it's gonna be a much harder sell. That would be the case no matter who was running the union, and that would be the case even if Unity had not stacked the deck to ensure their monopoly.

Even if Unity were to cut down on patronage and fire some of the blitheringly incompetent ass-kissers that pervade union employees, it's hard to imagine that the union would be able to provide the same level of service with significantly less cash. The political clout of union will diminish as its funding does, and the demagogues who hate us and everything we stand for will be in full party mode. If they can get this through the courts, they can get pretty much anything through the courts. After all, they'll have pretty much neutered much of the opposition by effectively defunding public unions. They've already got citizenhood for corporations. Why not further degrade the whole one person, one vote thing by crushing organized labor, the voice of working people?

Of course they can make exceptions for police, like Scott Walker did, because someone will have to guard their mansions when and if the bootless and unhorsed rise up with torches and pitchforks. But that hasn't happened to Walker yet, and considering the distance leadership has created between rank and file and themselves, I don't see UFT members rising up to follow Mulgrew anytime soon.

Make no mistake, we educators represent the last bastion of vibrant unionism in these United States. Our enemies want this to be the last nail in our coffin. Mulgrew says we will appeal at the state level if it passes, but my faith in his word is sorely limited. The middle class is rapidly disappearing, and the folks bankrolling Friedrichs couldn't be happier.

I can't believe we're left hanging, likely at the whim of one of the lunatic GOP Supreme Court Justices.

But what can you expect in the  face of an incipient oligarchy? Am I overly naive in calling it incipient? Time will tell, if it hasn't already.

The Grand Morals of the GOP

Donald Trump insulted one blowhard overpaid news commentator. Red State, or some similarly named bastion of conservatism, or Republicanism, or whatever it's called, is sorely insulted. This is beyond the pale and we will not tolerate it! He said she was bleeding out of her eyes or whatever, and this must refer to menstruation. Therefore Donald Trump is not fit to speak at our Very Important Thing.

Chris Christie says teachers need to be punched in the face, and that is just fine. After all, who cares about a few million teachers? And who cares if most of them are women? That's not misogynist. And anyway, going after labor is the Republican way. How can we help our country better than by breaking union, making it difficult to impossible for working people to negotiate, and making more money for the likes of the Koch Brothers or the Walmart Family?

The truth is, it's an outrage that any of them would attack working people. What the Democrats and Republicans should be fighting about is how best to help working people. And ostensibly, that's what they're doing. The problem is they're all lying, and the Democrats are following in their footsteps. How else do you explain an ostensible Democrat running for governor and saying he's going to go after unions?

But the Republicans say they're sensitive to women. That's why they banned Trump from the Very Important Thing. Now imagine all the women Scott Walker hurt when he killed collective bargaining and decimated union for all but the police, charged to protect him from the rabble. If Trump should be dropped from the conference, Walker should be dropped from the planet. How many thousands of women have been hurt in Wisconsin by his Koch-financed actions?

Donald Trump is a bloviating blowhard. He's shown himself, just over the last few weeks, to be a xenophobic, misogynistic narcissist who thinks anything he does is justified simply by the virtue of his having done it.  But make no mistake, he is the true face of the GOP. He does, as he points out, say the things none of the others will say. He can't be bothered with all that political correctness nonsense. And after all, why would you want anything like diplomacy or tact from someone in charge of negotiating over things like war or nuclear bombs? Trump has no editor and he says whatever he damn pleases.

For my money, Trump is the most honest of the lot. He's a straight talker. He doesn't respect women, he doesn't respect the press, he doesn't respect the people he does business with, he doesn't respect you or me and he doesn't respect anyone. But the truth is neither does Christie. And neither does Walker. And neither does Bush, who was in bed with Lehman Brothers as they were crashing our economy. I don't think any of the others do either.

I'm not all that sure about Hillary Clinton either. And the AFT message, that she said this or that, doesn't resonate with me either. They said the same thing about Obama and he sacrificed not only unionized teachers but also American schoolchildren to get through the few things he actually accomplished.

But we know exactly where the GOP stands, and it's quite important we push them out of our way if we ever want to get anywhere.

The Police and the Teachers

I don't support NYPD's turning their backs to Mayor de Blasio. What de Blasio said to his son, in view of what was happening in NYC and around the country was perfectly reasonable. I'd have said the same if I were him, and the community who voted for him, perhaps largely because of a commercial in which his son was prominently featured, needed to know that the mayor saw that. He opposed stop and frisk, ran on a platform saying so, and moved to block it. He has never said a disparaging word about NYPD.

On the other hand, I've watched Rudy Giuliani say teachers don't deserve raises because they stink. This was Rudy's way of arguing for merit pay, which has been around for a hundred years and has never worked anywhere. This argument, of course, is not restricted to Giuliani, and is bandied about by politicians statewide and nationally. It's discussed in op-eds as though it's common sense. Of course, common sense is the least common of all the senses, and this sort of blather has pervaded all of MSM, up to and including the allegedly liberal New York Times.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg treated us like something he had to scrape off of his Florsheims. He gave the police an 8% two year raise, and he gave FDNY and virtually every other union the same during an economic downturn. In lieu of that, he gave us a middle finger, threatened to lay us off, tried very hard to destroy our seniority rights (thought not those of any other union), and said he'd like to fire half of us and double class sizes. I don't know about you, but I've had very tough classes of 34. It's idiotic, counter-productive, and incredibly thoughtless to contemplate classes of 68 kids at a time.

With the financial support of the extremely right-wing, extremely wealthy Koch Brothers, Scott Walker decimated union in Wisconsin. He eliminated collective bargaining, and made unions vote annually for dues checkoff. Of course he didn't do that for police. Michael Bloomberg famously referred to the police as his private army. And someone has to protect Walker from the crowds that surrounded his capital when they realize how badly they're being screwed. Pretty much all of the above is disparate treatment.

The press regularly vilifies us. I've seen Campbell Brown and her nonsensical arguments plastered everywhere. Judging from the extremely selective stories she tells, literally based on a handful of cases, you'd think teachers were sexual predators. You'd think people like Bloomberg and his pawns ought to be able to fire us at will, based on unsubstantiated or even rejected allegations. I've read stories in the Daily News and the Post that mirrored her blather. I'm familiar with precisely one of the cases she endlessly repeats and I happen to know the teacher in question deserved nothing more than a caution to be careful of how his words can be interpreted. This is a lesson that teacher, after unmerited years in the rubber room and thousands in unnecessary fines, probably knows better than any other teacher in the city.

The NYPD officer, on the other hand, was facing a man strangled to death, and on video. This was ruled a homicide. A grand jury, however, cleared the officer. I don't hear Campbell Brown loudly crying for this officer's job. I don't see articles about him in the tabloids demanding justice. And in case it isn't clear, this officer was not accused of making a distasteful statement. This officer killed someone, someone who said, "I can't breathe," eleven times, and the video is all over the internet.

I would understand the cops turning their backs to the mayor on the basis of the crap contract they're being offered. My very first act of unionism was marching with UFT at a Labor Day parade in which we planned to do that to David Dinkins. We were all wearing black t-shirts that said, "Shame on City Hall" on the back. But we weren't at a funeral, and we weren't making the preposterous claim that Bill de Blasio had blood on his hands. Because our plan was no secret at all, Dinkins ran off to a tennis match somewhere rather than face us. Apparently, we are supposed to respect the authority of the police, no one may ever question the actions of a single police officer, and no one may warn their children to be careful when dealing with the police, even after we watch a man killed by a police officer on video.

On the other hand it's perfectly fine to vilify teachers, to stereotype us based on shoddy evidence, and to deprive us of due process based on a handful of sensationalized cases. We should trust in the good graces of folks like Mike Bloomberg and Dennis Walcott, and we should disregard the fact that they are fanatical ideologues with no regard for evidence or truth.

Is this because teaching is a profession dominated by women? Is it because time and time again our union leadership has compromised with folks like Bloomberg, embracing mayoral control, charter schools, colocations, two-tier due process, and things that looked very much like merit pay? Is it because the job of educating our children must always take second place to the importance of enriching the likes of Pearson, Eva Moskowitz and Rupert Murdoch? All of the above?

No more multiple choice questions for today. Today's a day for reflection. Why is there one standard for police, and a very different one for teachers? Why is it so widely accepted by the media? Is it the job of our union leadership to let the public know this? Is it possible to even do that, and if so, how?

If You Liked Philly Teachers Losing Contract, You'll Love Astorino in NY

Teachers in Philadelphia recently had their contract pretty much tossed in the trash. Step-raises were abolished, and teachers will be forced to pay into health care. This is ostensibly because the district is desperate for money. Why?

The SDP faces a $300 million budget shortfall largely created by slashing state education aid by $1 billion, and abandoning a state school funding formula designed to increase resource allocations to the highest need schools and districts

Yet they've got $400 million to build a prison, in case their priorities are not yet clear enough. It's illegal in Philadelphia for teachers to strike, just as it is in New York. But in New York, where UFT just went six years without a contract, we have the Triborough Amendment to the Taylor Law. This amendment keeps existing contracts in place until and unless a new one is signed.

Rob Asorino doesn't much like the Triborough Amendment. He says it's choking the government. This, of course, is the very same government that refuses to tax the wealthy BFFs of folks like Astorino and Cuomo, preferring to drastically cut education and, among other things, send police out on missions to ticket  dangerous people like you for much-needed funds.

It doesn't matter to Astorino that we don't have the most basic tool of unionism in our repertoire, the right to strike. Astorino thinks we sat around like zillionaires for six years, laughing at Bloomberg as he denied us our contract. But Astorino can't have it both ways. If he wants to change the reasonable Triborough Amendment, let him repeal the draconian Taylor Law.

If he doesn't want to do that, he may as well be Scott Walker, who happens to be his enthusiastic supporter. Actually, no one in Wisconsin knew Walker was going to decimate union either. But Astorino's insistence that we have an advantage is an outright falsehood. Triborough is simply a small compensation for a fundamental right that we don't have. There are draconian penalties for teachers who strike in NY.

In fact, I wouldn't put amending Triborough past Andrew Cuomo either. Cuomo pretends to be a "student lobbyist," but he maintains a Gap Elimination adjustment that strangles districts of state aid, while concurrently preventing them from raising taxes for than 2% or rate of inflation, whatever's lower. Essentially, he's ensuring worse service in public schools even as he stands up for Moskowitz and privatization.

Cuomo is awful, unacceptable. But it's quite clear he has to, from time to time, at least pretend to be a Democrat, rather than the self-serving opportunist he is. Cuomo was the first Democrat for whom I declined to vote, and I'm not changing my mind this time around. But any teacher who votes for Astorino may as well be voting for his BFF Scott Walker. Teachers can ignore who Astorino is, and vote for him anyway, but they're deluding themselves. I see no labor policy that differentiates him from his BFF Walker.

The only acceptable candidate for those of us who actually support education and working people is Green Howie Hawkins, already endorsed by Diane Ravitch. Maybe you think you know better than Diane.

But, having read three of her books,  I've yet to meet anyone who knows better than Diane. 

Public Enemy Number One

That's you and me. How did we become such a dire threat? Tough to say.

Right here if seniority protections are not stripped from NYC teachers, the quality of teaching will plummet and lives of our children will be ruined. This does not apply to teachers in other parts of the state, for whom quality does not matter. Nor does it apply to police or firefighters, because it makes no difference what the quality of their services may be. This is what Mayor Bloomberg wants us to believe, and this is why he's set up groups like ERN and E4E, to relentlessly push this illogical fairy tale.

In Wisconsin, of course, they need to save money.

There is no fiscal crisis in Wisconsin.  Governor Walker reports a nearly 130 million dollar deficit, but doesn't report that he caused it by giving a 140 million dollar tax break to large multinational corporations here in Wisconsin (e.g. WalMart). 

But even after the teacher unions offered large givebacks, Walker insisted he needed to preclude collective bargaining, and has been pushing through his programs, laws and courts be damned.

In Florida they're changing teacher evaluations in a manner described as all stick and no carrot. Why anyone wants to teach there is a mystery to me. In fact, in states all over the country, newly elected teabagger governors are going after teachers in a big way. Even in liberal New York, Governor Andy Cuomo is is posing draconian education cuts while refusing to extend taxes on New York's Richest.

You see, people who make 250K, or even 1 million a year, can't pay any more taxes. But teachers need to take pay freezes, benefit cuts, and lower pensions. And kids, particularly poorer kids, need to make do with fewer services, fewer courses, fewer teachers, and larger class sizes. In fact, in Missouri, just around the centennial of the Triangle Shirtwaist disaster, they're contemplating the rebirth of child labor.

How did we become so gullible, so apathetic, so docile as to accept moving back the clock a hundred years or more? Wisconsin appears to have awakened, and there are signs of life elsewhere.

But any country that's made its teachers the enemy has a questionable future at best. What can we do to move away from this paradigm, move away from oligarchy, and reclaim our city, state, and country?

Right to Shirk

Diane Ravitch writes an impassioned condemnation of Governor Scott Walker, and his cynical, disingenuous push to kill collective bargaining rights even though all his economic requests--the ones he said were crucial--were met. Of course there'd be no crisis whatsoever had Walker not granted Walmart such a huge tax break, but that's neither here nor there.

Several commenters suggest that unions are extortionists. Simply because they offer advice, representation, negotiation of contracts, benefits, higher wages, and all sorts of other services, you have to not only join, but also pay dues. How dare they? Actually you don't have to join, but unions here require you to pay a fee anyway, so there's not any advantage in not joining.

I know how these people feel. After all, I failed to vote for George W. Bush, not once, but twice. Despite this decision, every time I looked at my paycheck stub, I'd paid plenty to support his programs, many of which I viscerally opposed. There were those endless wars. There was that utter lack of support for organized labor (which I happen to support). Then there were those tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, who least needed them, while we were at war. There were the huge deficits. There were the reprehensible social priorities, the loathsome and cynical disregard for the needs of most Americans, the rampant corruption.

Yet still I had to pay taxes. And now, President Barack Obama, for whom I actually voted, seems not much different from cowboy GW. In fact, his education policies seem not much different from those Johny McCain proposed, the ones that kept me from voting for him. We're still in both wars, the health care bill is a shadow of what I'd hoped for, the Bush tax cuts are extended, and the Employee Free Choice Act, which Obama promised to support, is more dead than Elvis in the face of the GOP House.

Now President Obama spends his time talking education with Jeb Bush rather than walking it in Wisconsin.

If I had half a chance, maybe I'd withhold taxes. If there were a President I liked a bunch of other people would withhold taxes. But when you're part of a community you can't, you don't do that. Those who speak of freedom to withhold union dues do not want union to survive, just as a government couldn't survive with voluntary taxes.

Their talk of freedom is simply nonsense, another distraction. We're all about distractions in this country today. If people were paying attention, the whole country would look like Wisconsin--if not Egypt.

I'm Not Against Tenure, But...

So says faux-Democrat Cory Booker in his love letter to the reformers who put him where he is today. Sure, let's not abolish tenure. Let's simply make it meaningless. The Wal-Mart family did not finance Booker so as to help working people. Wal-Mart money subverts public schools because union is a scourge that must be stopped, so that people can do as they're told, shut the hell up, and work until they die.

Booker hits all the same tired points "reformers" hit every morning instead of the national anthem, including the nonsensical claim teachers get lifetime jobs, and that we need to add merit pay. This, of course, is trotted out despite very recent evidence that it doesn't work. Predictably, Booker goes into the same old nonsense about bad teachers. They are a plague, apparently, and the only way to get rid of them is to worsen working conditions for all teachers. Teachers, says Wal-Mart's favorite mayor, must be compensated based on "effectiveness." Now what the hell that is, Booker doesn't say. Does it mean they get higher test scores? Does it mean they're cute and perky?

I'll tell you precisely what it means. An effective teacher, to disingenuous corporate puppets like Cory Booker, is an at-will employee. Booker rubs shoulders with Democrats and appears, for all intents and purposes, to be a reasonable guy. But he speaks well of anti-teacher Chris Christie and crooked Chris Cerf, because in whatever remains of his heart, he's no different from them or indeed, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

They all represent the same interests. Perhaps Booker takes another approach, not wishing to appear so radical. But make no mistake, like Christie, like Walker, he'll happily roll back the twentieth century so if you don't come in Sunday you won't bother coming in Monday.

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

Our country's awash in nonsense. Here is America, grabbing torches and pitchforks, united against evil teachers. How dare they spend decades working for less than similarly educated individuals? How dare they actually use the job security they got in exchange for giving up all that money to keep their jobs? Who the hell do these teachers think they are?

In Providence, they're simply firing all their teachers, no ifs, ands, or buts.  We all know that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, the guy who answers to the billionaire Koch Brothers (and demonstrates its literal truth in a prank call) is off maintaining he needs to close a budget, and therefore needs to kill collective bargaining for teachers and nurses. The fact that they're ready to give in on all economic issues does not persuade him otherwise.

Closer to home, some poll says 85% of New Yorkers oppose LIFO. The fact that there is no objective system to replace it did not enter into that poll. People just assumed there was, and that was good enough not only for the people giving the poll, but for its unquestioning participants.  Yet once again, the bills coming up to address that situation deal only with New York City teachers. How on earth can a Suffolk County state senator seriously introduce a bill that affects only teachers outside of his district? Only in America.

Mayor Bloomberg has laid down the gauntlet. Let him fire teachers, and let him select which teachers to fire. That's it. Let principals give U-ratings, for any reason or no reason, and you're gone.  Screw the contract, and screw people who've spent decades teaching. If you're principal is crazy, or a Leadership Academy automaton,  too bad for you. When Walmart comes to the city, maybe you can become an "associate" and wear one of those cool polyester vests made by someone in China making 18 cents an hour.

Bloomberg has been threatening layoffs for three years running. Were he to get rid of LIFO, you better believe they won't be mere words. You will see senior teachers dumped to the curb. No more pesky chapter leaders. You'd be crazy to take that job (unless you just took it to get a period off, go to conventions, and not actually do anything). Oppose the principal, get a U, and get fitted for that polyester vest. Contract, shmontract. They can and will do whatever the hell they want, because you can bet there will be layoffs each and every year, whether or not they're warranted.

The most incredible thing is the Fox News-fueled phenomenon of the watchful American, making sure that no one whatsoever has decent working conditions. I've been saying this for some time, but I think Diane Ravitch said it particularly well in her column the other day:

"As for pension and health-care envy, it is a sad thing when working Americans complain that someone else has benefits, instead of agreeing that everyone should have coverage for their health and old age. It reminds me of an old Soviet joke where a peasant says, "My neighbor has a cow and I have none, I want his cow to die." We should not join in this race to the bottom."

It's amazing that people don't realize the futility, the stupidity of such actions. It's like we're all out in the streets of Egypt demanding an even more repressive dictator.

There's a hysteria against taxes--they are evil. We pay too much, goes the myth. Never mind that paying more taxes could improve our quality of life, as Europeans and Canadians know. Never mind that such changes could end up making us more productive, stimulating our economy, and actually bringing up salaries. And never mind that all these various crises could be averted by rolling back tax cuts on the rich. President Obama caved and continued the idiotic Bush tax cuts. Governor Cuomo refused to continue a tax on those making over 200K a year.  The results are cuts to education and health care for the poor. Our priorities are insane.

There is hope. I leave you with the clear and simple voice of Cynthia Nixon, speaking truth to absurdity. I only hope someone is listening.

Wisconsin--Not the End Game

Being middle class, or maintaining a middle class for our children, will be a tough battle, even if Wisconsin's corporate puppet Governor Scott Walker gets his comeuppance. (Wakening voices in our country suggest it's coming.) Still, you'll hear a lot of arguments from reasonable-looking shills like NY Times columnist David Brooks--here's how it goes--private workers need a defense against bosses who want to maximize profits. Public workers, he suggests, have no such need.

This is utter nonsense. Politicians like Walker indulge in Shock Doctrine. Walker not only took advantage of a crisis, but actually created it by initiating a tax break that caused the shortfall he claims, with a straight face, he must eliminate collective bargaining in order to close. He's also heavily financed by New York's Koch brothers, a fact even the staid New York Times editorial board arose from its slumber to note this morning.

Brooks speaks softly, wears a tie, but gives the appearance of reason by deliberately withholding vital info from his readers. He fails to acknowledge, for example, the tax breaks that created the crisis, and fails to note that the legislation not only cripples unions, but also allows Walker to sell public utilities via handy no-bid contracts. There's also implicit criticism there, more explicit elsewhere, that because folks like Walker are democratically elected, they're somehow beyond reproach. This is the same canard Bloomberg trotted out when he complained of loud protests at his thoroughly undemocratic PEP meetings. In fact, as Paul Krugman points out, moneyed interests dominate our society, caused the economic meltdown, and now manipulate politicians like Walker with ease.

One argument that I keep hearing from even people like Krugman is that we must give back something, usually meaning a reduced pension. It wouldn't be necessary to give back anything if the wealthy, partying since Ronald Reagan came to office, would pay their fair share. Yet people say, "Gee, why should public workers have a decent retirement and health benefits if I don't?" A more sensible question would be, "Gee, why the hell don't I have a decent retirement and health benefits?"

And the attack on LIFO is the same thing. The fact, as most readers of this blog know, is over our careers we've made less than our equally-educated private sector counterparts. In fact, city teachers have made far less than our suburban counterparts for most of our careers. I remember meeting a Long Island teacher with ten years fewer experience than I had who made 10K a year more than I had. Perhaps the disparity is no longer quite so outrageous. But that's not the point. What is?

The billionaires who sponsor these things are the same ones who attack LIFO. And the goal is the same--to get rid of employees who make too much money and keep a low-paid work force. Said work force will have no collective bargaining and be in constant fear of being fired for speaking out. This is clearly the agenda of the Koch brothers, and it's reflected in Fox News, the New York Post, Mayor Bloomberg, Michelle Rhee, DFER, ERN, E4E, and whatever other offshoots billionaire money creates.

How Far Is Wisconsin?

The spectacle of the anti-union, anti-middle class governor of Wisconsin openly trying to break public unions is something I'd never expected to see, even after years of Fox News brainwashing the American public with pro-corporate nonsense. Yet there it is. Walker got his ducks in a row by precluding negotiations with the lame-duck session that preceded him. His first instinct was not to push this legislation, but rather to simply decertify unions. Nonetheless, with the legislation he proposes, unions would have so little power they'd be irrelevant.

Oddly enough, union leaders have already accepted the notions of increased contributions to pensions and health care benefits, claiming they just want to preserve their right to collectively bargain. Of course, giving into these demands before any bargaining process may have rendered collective bargaining, in this instance, a moot point. Nonetheless, Governor Walker says there will be no compromise, and is busing in thousands of idiots from the Tea Party to bolster his principled position--that he can do whatever the hell he feels like and working people can go screw themselves.

One thing you don't read about very much is that Walker issued a tax break that pretty much equals the savings he's trying to recoup on the backs of state workers. It's kind of a Robin Hood thing, except the money goes to Walmart instead of the poor, and takes from the middle class instead of the rich. Another thing not often mentioned is that, under Walker's bill, unions would have to be recertified on an annual basis. Think about Walmart, and how it's managed to avoid union all these years. It closed a store in Canada rather than admit union.  When meat-cutters in a Texas Walmart decided to unionize, it cut meat cutting from the entire chain. It took nine years before Walmart even discussed this. Can you imagine having to face a Walmart-style intimidation campaign on an annual basis?

And this, clearly, is the model Walker likes. Unfortunately, President Barack Obama failed to keep his campaign promise to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. Such an act would have made it far more difficult for sleazeballs like Walker and the charter-loving Walmart family to continue thwarting the efforts of working people. Having waited past the point when the House turned GOP, the legislation is pretty much dead in the water.

But we need to keep an eye on Wisconsin. This is clearly the GOP template for the rest of the country, and while a corporatist slimeball like Andrew Cuomo won't yet openly embrace such tactics, he's also declined to continue a popular millionaire tax that could substantially ease our budget gap, preferring to cut schools and medical aid to the poor. He's also stated very clearly he plans to go after unions.

Could it happen here? Not right now. But Wisconsin is a flash point, a place where collective bargaining for public unions originated. Half a century later, look how things have changed. While Cuomo doesn't yet openly embrace Walker-style tactics, and NY's legislature wouldn't likely support him right now, his rhetoric is not all that foreign from Walker's.

There's an apocryphal Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."

I'm afraid the interesting times are unfolding right before us. We've done our part to enable them by voting for Bloomberg, voting for Cuomo, and voting for the 2005 UFT Contract. UFT leadership has helped by endorsing numerous deals not in our interest.

High time we all wised up. Otherwise we may as well all get jobs at Walmart.

Abolish the Middle Class

That's what the Wisconsin Governor wants to do. He's basically living the Republican dream--rolling back that costly and inconvenient 20th century. Governor Scott Walker is pushing a bill to wipe out collective bargaining for public unions, except regarding salary. However, they'd only be able to negotiate increases that matched consumer price index.

Therefore, the best they'd be able to do is keep up with inflation (unless local voters approved a larger increase.) However, with the immediate 5.8% deduction Walker is imposing to fund pensions, as well as whatever it costs for 12.6% of their health care, they're unlikely to even stay where they started.

Not only that, but unions will be prohibited from collecting dues, and dues will be optional. This will pretty much preclude unions from mustering the resources to fight back. And should they try, Walker's prepared to call out the National Guard. Perhaps this is the new paradign, what we can expect from our corporate-friendly government. Haven't heard a peep about this from President Obama, fresh from his recent shout-out to the business community. Perhaps he's too busy helping Michelle advertise for Walmart.

Here in New York,  it doesn't seem time just yet for Andrew "take on the unions" Cuomo to resort to such tactics. After all, the legislature is still controlled by Democrats in NY, and some of these Democrats, unlike Cuomo, are still really Democrats. But Wisconsin is the wave of the future if we don't look out, stand up, and be heard. Democracy itself is in peril when working people are simply shut out like this. And while I applaud recent events in Egypt, I wonder what it will take for America to awaken and rise up against those who'd do the same. For folks like Walker, and Bloomberg, dictatorship is simply a more efficient way to get things done.

Perish forbid any of them should restore or continue taxes on those who can most afford to pay them. What on earth does it take to wake the sleeping giant known as America?