But back to our passage of the week; wherein it has been suggested to The Pirate Captain (who is running for an elected office) that though he has just learned the voting age is eighteen, he should spend the morning kissing babies:
“…so there’s not much point lavishing all this attention on babies when they can’t even vote for me, is there? I should be concentrating on the eighteen-year-olds. And you know which other bit of the electorate is often unfairly overlooked? Women. So really it makes a lot more sense for me to spend the morning kissing eighteen-year-old women.”
Today (5/13/09) the news in Los Angeles reported a court order has thwarted a threatened one day teacher “walkout” organized by the teachers union in Los Angeles (UTLA). The walkout was to be in protest of a planned layoff resulting from California’s multi-billion dollar budget deficit.
Now I don’t mean to pick on the teachers union specifically because let’s face it…if it starts with anything and ends in “union” you will find numerous examples of similar shenanigans.
But seriously…a one day walkout? VERY mature UTLA…way to set an example.
Great job demonstrating to your students the best way to deal with adversity: Quit. Except you aren’t really quitting are you…you’re just acting like quitters. At least have the courage of your convictions and find yourself a different line of work if yours has become too much to bear.
Oh wait…why would you ever quit a job where it’s damn near impossible to get fired; when instead you can just disrupt the whole system to nobody’s benefit and do so with relative impunity? I will grant you that some teachers are underpaid, some schools are underfunded and the Los Angeles Unified School District is highly dysfunctional and poorly run…but it’s your team (the UTLA) that has consistently prevented any new innovation because it would mean an overhaul of your contracts; which is apparently too risky a proposition for the UTLA.
And just exactly whose sympathy are you looking for with this? The rest of us are dealing with layoffs, unpaid furloughs, unmatched 401K’s, reduced salaries, decreased benefits, longer hours etc. etc. Except the rest of us don’t get tenure, summer vacation or pensions. Instead, the rest of us are required to deliver results. If we don’t continuously improve and deliver better results…we are replaced with someone who does. But you folks in the UTLA get to keep your job in spite of declining test scores and increased dropout rates.
Over the course of my career I have been part of and/or witness to: layoffs resulting from company acquisitions; forced unpaid furlough to prevent layoffs; targeted workforce reductions; blanket workforce reductions; office closures; elimination of layers of management; firing of vendors etc. etc.
Unlike the UTLA, not a single person or group I have ever known or worked with has ever threatened to “walk out” of work to make some political point in response to such adversity. In fact, the immediate reaction that everybody in those circumstances had was to get their head down and start working harder.
The UTLA should take a lesson from the rest of us and do the same.
Oh by the way UTLA, smooth move costing Los Angeles more money by making us go to the courts to get you to stay at school for another day. That’s what I call being part of the solution.
So UTLA…sorry the court had to step in and ruin your day off. Looks like you’re just going to have to go to work and do your job. How tragic.
The President has proposed to eliminate $17 Billion from a multitude of government programs that are obviously wasteful. This figure represents a mere one half of one percent of next year’s budget; and yet our wise and generous leaders in the House and Senate are actually working to prevent these cuts from happening.
Though he is not the only guilty party (as evidenced here), Congressman Mike Ross (D-Ark) stated that he would oppose “any cuts” in agriculture subsidies because “farmers and farm families depend on this federal assistance”.
Wow.
My first thought was that Congress simply needs to be reminded of what a subsidy is; because nobody who knows its definition could possibly subscribe to a theory that proposes to preserve a subsidy ad infinitum simply because its recipients have grown to "depend on this federal assistance”.
So let's make it clear; Webster defines a subsidy as “a grant by a government to a private person or company to assist an enterprise deemed advantageous to the public”.
So for the benefit of those ill informed, misguided souls like myself, would someone please tell me how exactly the subsidies received by farmers in Arkansas' 4th Congressional District is advantageous to the public? This is a federal subsidy, so the “public” in this conversation includes everyone who pays federal taxes. Seems to me that if it's that important to Arkansas, then Arkansas should raise it's state tax to cover the cost and leave the rest of us out of it.
Hey New York…enjoying that hefty return on your farming investment in Arkansas? How about you Los Angeles? No? I didn’t think so.
If the litmus test for subsidizing something is simply having grown accustomed to a particular financial result, then one could argue the Government should have subsidized the AIG bonuses instead of trying to tax them away; those investment bankers have grown to depend on those bonuses you know.
If Congress is going to apply stupid logic to one group they should at least be consistent.
If you really want to know what these farm subsidies YOU are funding actually accomplish, you can learn more right here.
I wonder if Congress would support a government subsidy designed to bring my income level back to its pre-recession level…after all, I had grown to depend on it.
