[SLUG-POL] (FWD) [Fwd: Teacher's union bosses seek revenge on borrowed money]

From: Paul M Foster (paulf@quillandmouse.com)
Date: Mon Oct 21 2002 - 23:19:36 EDT


Been quiet for a while. My wife Nancy sent me this, so I thought I'd
forward it to you to chew on.

As an aside, here's the thing that really makes no sense to me. The
teaching establishment is supposedly there to acquire the product of
well-taught students; that is, students who know their stuff. One would
think that any initiative that would objectify that achievement would be
welcomed by the teaching establishment. And yet, they appear to be
willing to do just about anything to prevent such a thing from
happening. Which tells you their objective isn't actually to make
students who know their stuff. I can maybe understand this attitude with
auto workers, who would presumably want to simply put in their 8 hours
of slow work and get paid enormous sums. But teaching should be a noble
profession, where the point is to do what all good liberals profess to
want to do: make a better world. But I guess the real intent is to put
in their 5 hours of mediocre crowd control, and not have to be
responsible for any actual improvement in students.

(This is not aimed at individual teachers. I've known some truly
outstanding ones. I use the term "teaching establishment" for a reason.
It appears that the true villains of this piece are the union(s) and the
administrations.)

Paul

----- Forwarded message from "Nancy J. Foster" <nancyf@quillandmouse.com> -----

From: "Nancy J. Foster" <nancyf@quillandmouse.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 22:21:07 -0700
To: Paul Foster <paulf@quillandmouse.com>
Subject: [Fwd: Teacher's union bosses seek revenge on borrowed money]
Message-ID: <3DB4E043.EBFF588E@quillandmouse.com>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (Win98; U)

Get your duct tape out...

--
Nancy
Message-ID: <md5:D1E4BA1F6D7BD60CC720BF8F937DFD5E>

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The following article is from National Review. Please share it with your friends, co-workers, etc. ---------------------------------------- October 21, 2002, 9:00 a.m. To Defeat Bush A Florida teachers’ union leverages its headquarters to defeat the president’s brother.

By Bernadette Malone

One week after Al Gore conceded Florida's hotly contested 2000 election and George W. Bush became president, the Democrat-controlled teachers' union in the state began to take its revenge on the Republican party.

On December 20, 2000, the Florida Education Association signed a new mortgage on its Tallahassee headquarters. Two years later, the $1.7 million in equity the FEA sucked out of its South Adams Street building is being used to pummel President Bush's brother, Jeb, as he attempts to become Florida's first Republican governor to win reelection. Since January, the FEA has spent $1.5 million supporting Democrat Bill McBride against Jeb, and the two candidates are now tied in polls.

Confronted with their annual reports to the U.S. Department of Labor listing a $1,002,954 mortgage in 2000, and a $2,723,085 mortgage the next year, FEA President Maureen Dinnen doesn't deny leveraging her union's headquarters for a single political candidate. "We were authorized to extend as many funds as needed because our people are so upset about the situation in Florida," she insists. Dinnen claims in May 2001 the FEA's delegate assembly gave her "not exactly a blank check," but the authority to do whatever was necessary to defeat the younger Bush - who supports vouchers and standardized testing for Florida students.

But Dinnen and her cohorts didn't wait to see whether the Democratic nominee would be any more sympathetic to their demands than Jeb Bush before offering up their teachers' building. Public records from Leon Country, Florida show that the FEA took out a new mortgage with Capital City Bank six months before the delegate assembly allegedly ordered its "hit" on Jeb, and 13 months before it endorsed Bill McBride over former attorney general Janet Reno and two other Democrats in the primary.

Asked about this telling timeline, Dinnen responds: "I'm not comfortable talking about that. Whatever we did to secure those funds, I know it was legal and we have nothing to be ashamed of. As far as giving you exact dates, I'm not comfortable doing that. I'm not a financial person."

Try pleading a phobia of numbers with Florida's math teachers - whose union dues probably paid for the South Adams Street building that Dinnen and the FEA's leadership leveraged in their campaign to destroy Jeb Bush.

The FEA says the money its companion organization, Quality Public Education Corp (QPEC), has poured into television commercials for McBride is largely from teachers' union dues. It may be that the cashed-out equity from the FEA's headquarters didn't go straight into the McBride effort, but it just happened to free up $1.5 million in union dues for politicking. (Class, can you spell "fungible"?)

If McBride wins - thanks in part to the FEA gambling the teachers' building - its members won't have to deal with Jeb Bush holding them accountable for student performance anymore. They'd better hope that payoff is worth the hike in union dues to pay off the extra interest on a mortgage $1.7 million higher than it was before their leadership sought revenge against the Bushes in December, 2000.

- Bernadette Malone is a columnist for the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader and an editor at Regnery Publishing in Washington, D.C. _____________________________________________________________________ Please note: The Republican Party of Florida respects your privacy. Based on your profile, you have asked to receive occasional updates and information from The Republican Party of Florida. You can unsubscribe at any time.

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----- End forwarded message -----



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