CTA in Bed with the Occupy Crowd? LOL!
February 27, 2012 | Filed Under Budget, California, Democrats/Leftists, Larry Sand, Liberals, Public Employees Unions, Taxes, Teachers Unions | Comments Off
-By Larry Sand
The California Teachers Association is seeking cover in the Occupy Wall Street movement. The OWS crowd doesn’t understand that CTA and other public employee unions are a major part of the problem.
Last week, part of my post concerned itself with the March 5th “Occupy the Capitol” protest being promoted by the California Teachers Association. I wrote,
“Not only is CTA inviting the OWS rabble, they are calling for teachers to attend, even though it is a school day, thus costing taxpayers all over the state untold thousands in costs for subs and robbing children of a productive school day.”
Little did I know, March 5th was just the tip of the iceberg. The CTA website is now touting a “Week of Action” covering the first seven days of March. Many activities are planned and will be led by various “Occupy” groups that have sprung up like weeds. The result is a grand mishmash of radical organizations coming together to vent their spleen over various and sundry issues, and all links to their activities are available through the CTA website.
Right on the CTA homepage you can access the MarchFirst DayofAction Facebook page which whines about the evils of corporations and privatization.
Then there is March 1 National Day of Action for Education website which blasts,
“We call on all students, teachers, workers, and parents from all levels of education —pre-K-12 through higher education in public and private institutions— and all Occupy assemblies, labor unions, and organizations of oppressed communities, to mobilize on March 1st, 2012 across the country to tell those in power: The resources exist for high-quality education for all.” If we make the rich and the corporations pay we can reverse the budget cuts, tuition hikes, and attacks on job security, and fully fund public education and social services.”
This site, with its clenched fist logo, also has a list of supporting organizations. The roster consists of a motley collection of radical retreads — SDS and MEChA and latter day acolytes – By Any Means Necessary and Occupy groups from all over the country.
Occupy Education California has a list of accomplices on their home page – American Federation of Teachers, California Federation of Teachers, Berkeley Faculty Association, Codepink, La Raza, SDS, Socialist Organizer and Old Lesbians Organizing for Change.
There is even a meet-up page online, so that if you are an OWSer and think that you must “do something,” you can find an event here. (Amazingly, there is a group in Beverly Hills. So I guess after stuffing yourself at Trader Vics, you can go out and rail at the
rich.)
All these groups’ messages are a thinly veiled attack on capitalism and can be summarized as such:
Corporations and rich people bad.
Big government good. They take money from corporations and rich people and give it to us.
Clearly there is a 1960s flavor to all this – a pastiche of angry student groups and serious radicals, but with a new wrinkle, especially in CA – teachers unions and college faculty associations are involved. During the 60s, most unions of any kind wouldn’t be caught dead at protest rallies, but these are different times and different unions. The irony here is palpable. The teachers unions and other public employee unions, barely existent in the 60s, are claiming victimhood, but in reality are a big part of the problem.
One of the mantras of the Occupy crowd is that corporations should pay their fair share.
Do the OWSers know that the California Teachers Association and other teachers unions are corporations with a special 501(c)(5) tax status which means that they pay no tax? Yes, CTA is a corporation that brings in nearly $200 million a year and pays no taxes. Yet, CTA is promoting events that call for corporations to pay their fair share??!! (If anyone reading this blog has the misfortune to get caught up in an Occupy event, why not ask one of the protesters if they think it’s fair that CTA should pay nothing in taxes. Please post their response in the “comments” area below.)
Do the OWSers know that private corporations in the U.S. have a 35 percent tax rate which is the second highest corporate tax rate of all industrialized countries?
Do the OWSers know that many the leaders of the unions they are partnering with make in the neighborhood of $500,000 a year which makes them one percenters?
Do the OWSers understand that corporations are behind their beloved revolutionary accoutrements – smart phones, lap tops, social media websites, etc?
Do the OWSers understand that CA is in deep financial trouble in large part due to overly generous public employee union pension funds and that these funds invest in the stock market (a collection of corporations) to make up for the shortfall?
Do the OWSers and their new best friends in the teachers unions have a clue as to how many teachers have money tied up in 403(b)s? These tax sheltered annuities provide a way for teachers to invest in stocks (corporations) and defer any tax payments on capital gains until after they retire?
The anti-corporate hysteria has spread like wildfire, but corporations are not the problem. CTA and other public employee unions, with their privileged tax exempt status and endless demands on the private sector, are the real greed mongers. Yet CTA et al have the cojones to join forces with the OWSers. And the OWSers are either too uninformed or too brainwashed to realize the irony.
______
Larry Sand began his teaching career in New York in 1971. Since 1984, he has taught elementary school as well as English, math, history and ESL in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where he also served as a Title 1 Coordinator. Retired in 2009, he is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues – information teachers will often not get from their school districts or unions.
“CTEN” was formed in 2006 because a wide range of information from the more global concerns of education policy, education leadership, and education reform, to information having a more personal application, such as professional liability insurance, options of relationships to teachers’ unions, and the effect of unionism on teacher pay, comes to teachers from entities that have a specific agenda. Sand’s comments and op-eds have appeared in City Journal, Associated Press, Newsweek, Townhall Magazine, Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union Tribune, Los Angeles Daily News, San Jose Mercury News, Orange County Register and other publications. This past May, after his weekly blog proved to be very popular, he began writing a monthly article for City Journal, the Manhattan Institute’s policy publication. He has appeared on numerous broadcast news programs and talk radio shows in Southern California and nationally.
Sand has participated in panel discussions and events focusing on education reform efforts and the impact of teachers’ unions on public education. In March 2010, Sand participated in a debate hosted by the non-profit Intelligence Squared, an organization that regularly hosts Oxford-style debates, which was nationally broadcast on Bloomberg TV and NPR, as well as covered by Newsweek. Sand and his teammates – Terry Moe of the Hoover Institution and former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige, opposed the proposition – Don’t Blame Teachers Unions For Our Failing Schools. The pro-union team included Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. In August 2010, he was on a panel at the Where’s the Outrage? Conference in San Francisco, where he spoke about how charter school operators can best deal with teachers’ unions. This past January he was on panels in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Mateo in support of National School Choice week. Additionally, CTEN has hosted two informational events this year – one addressing the secret agenda that is prevalent in many schools these days and the other concerning itself with California’s new Parent Trigger law. The latter event was covered by both the English and Spanish language press.
Sand has also worked with other organizations to present accurate information about the relationship between teachers and their unions, most recently assisting in the production of a video for the Center for Union Facts in which a group of teachers speak truthfully about the teachers’ unions. At this time, he is conferring with and being an advisor to education policy experts who are crafting major education reform legislation.
CTEN maintains an active and strong new media presence, reaching out to teachers and those interested in education reform across the USA, and around the world, with its popular Facebook page, whose members include teachers, writers, think tankers, and political activists. Since 2006, CTEN has experienced dramatic growth.
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