The Teachers' Union's Dumb, Dangerous Lack of Ideas

The Teachers' Union's Dumb, Dangerous Lack of Ideas
From the perspective of the teachers’ union goons, I suppose that obeying the law ranks as a “dumb, dangerous idea.” That might be because obeying laws seems to confound the teachers’ union. And they don’t like it when obeying those laws is demanded of them. For the second time in recent years, the teachers’ union has chosen to spend its members’ dues illegally. And for the second time, they’ve been called to task by the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. As evidenced by their temper tantrum, the union goons don’t like it one bit.
The Evergreen Freedom Foundation is a libertarian leaning think tank, that thinks, among other things, that laws should be obeyed. It is particularly interested in seeing to it that its own pet project, Initiative 134, is obeyed, enforced and upheld.
Initiative 134, otherwise known as the Paycheck Protection Act, forbids trade unions from spending compulsory union dues upon political campaigns. The Evergreen Freedom Foundation thinks that your money is your own and nobody has the inherent authority to seize your money and use it to promote political candidates or causes – particularly if the earner of that money does not support the same political agenda as the union bosses. And even if the wage earner does support the same candidate or cause as the union, the wage earner should have the right to decide just what, if any, support to give. As much as a teacher might want Al Gore to win, that same teacher might prefer to buy her child a new pair of shoes rather than buy a radio spot for that particular sweat soaked failed politician.
Washington Education Association president is particularly miffed because his union would probably get away with flouting the law if it weren’t for the EFF. As the state’s law enforcers betray little enthusiasm for enforcing laws that take money out of their own political coffers, the EFF has once again taken matters into its own hands by suing the WEA. This has provoked the WEA into a spasm of name calling.
So now that the union cannot use its members dues’ for political campaigns, the union goons have decided to spend their members’ dues on a campaign of name calling. The union has placed advertisements in newspapers and on radio ridiculing the Evergreen Freedom Foundation’s leader, Bob Williams. On radio they refer to him as a “failed politician.”
To qualify as a failed politician, the radio ad recalls Bob Williams last two political campaigns: "Bob Williams, remember him?" says the radio ad. "Ran for governor -- lost. Ran for Congress -- lost. Washed-up, out of work, Bob decides he's an `idea guy."
The newspaper ad depicts a man in a dunce cap and disparages the Evergreen Freedom Foundation as a group of, “extremists with dumb, dangerous ideas."
"A legitimate think tank doesn't spend the money they do litigating," whined Washington Education Association President Charles Hasse, in defense of the name calling campaign.
I dunnoh about that. But, according to the law, a legitimate union does not spend its money on political campaigns.
The union likes to make a big issue of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation’s finances. It points out that much of its money comes from out of state. The Walton Foundation, of Bentonville Arkansas, donated $300,000 to EFF from 1998 through 2000. Richard Mellon Scaife’s “Sarah Scaife Foundation” gave EFF $150,000. The Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation contributed $250,000.
To the teachers’ union, there is something nefarious about people giving money freely to causes they favor. The union goons’ view is that there is something pure about spending the money that it strong-arms from its members.
What’s of particular interest is the level of debate the teachers’ union has chosen. Rather than engage the EFF on the battlefield of ideas, the goons prefer immature ad hominem attacks against the man who puts a whuppin’ on them every time he can draw them onto that battlefield.
The teachers, whose money is being spent on this temper tantrum, really have to ask a couple of questions: In what light does this sort of childish behavior place their profession, and is this really what their leadership is paid to do? Somehow, I doubt that appearing more immature and petulant than their charges in the classroom really does them any favors.