January 3, 2006

Education

What Do These Things Have to do with Education?

Marc Comtois

According to the Wall Street Journal:

If we told you that an organization gave away more than $65 million last year to Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Amnesty International, AIDS Walk Washington and dozens of other such advocacy groups, you'd probably assume we were describing a liberal philanthropy. In fact, those expenditures have all turned up on the financial disclosure report of the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers union.

Under new federal rules pushed through by Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, large unions must now disclose in much more detail how they spend members' dues money. Big Labor fought hard (if unsuccessfully) against the new accountability standards, and even a cursory glance at the NEA's recent filings--the first under the new rules--helps explain why. They expose the union as a honey pot for left-wing political causes that have nothing to do with teachers, much less students. . .

When George Soros does this sort of thing, at least he's spending his own money. The NEA is spending the mandatory dues paid by members who are told their money will be used to gain better wages, benefits and working conditions. According to the latest filing, member dues accounted for $295 million of the NEA's $341 million in total receipts last year. But the union spent $25 million of that on "political activities and lobbying" and another $65.5 million on "contributions, gifts and grants" that seemed designed to further those hyper-liberal political goals.

Indeed. Thankfully, the average union member can also find out where some of his hard earned dues money is being spent, too. So, if you're curious, go here and check it out.

4:00 PM
Comments, although monitored, are not necessarily representative of the views Anchor Rising's contributors or approved by them. We reserve the right to delete or modify comments for any reason.

I'm just so thankful we have such 'professionals' teaching our kids....

Posted by: Anthony at January 3, 2006 5:28 PM

I just posted this WSJ piece on RIFuture, what are the odds they'll leave it up...

Happy New Year to all and thanks to Anchor Rising blogmasters!

Posted by: Roadrunner at January 3, 2006 9:06 PM

The odds of RI Future leaving anything up that might run contrary to their radically crazed left-wing view is slim. They censor that blog so much it is a joke. I've stopped looking at it. What is so comical, and so typical of liberals, like wacked-out tenured university professors is that they'll have everyone believe they are for diversity. Yet, don't you dare have diversity of opinion because they have no tolerance for that. Like communists censoring the press, RI Future represents anything but RI's future.

Posted by: aztec at January 3, 2006 10:04 PM

Those comments about the RI Future blog are interesting. I've posted things there and for some reason they don't show up. I thought I probably didn't push the right button, but after a few times it made me wonder. I hardly ever agree with the totally biased left-wing liberal agenda those people have, and now I understand what happened.
What's the sense of having a blog where you don't show dissenting opinion.
Aztec put it perfectly about how tolerant those liberals really are.

Posted by: Benter at January 4, 2006 6:28 AM

Pretty amazing, just checked... its still there. RIpop must have a union rally this morning...

By the way... another far left cause the NEA is sure to donate to...Chafee for Senate... to help bail him out of his Republican Primary predicament

Posted by: roadrunner at January 4, 2006 10:51 AM

Now isn't this funny. I've been waiting for this topic to come up because RI Pop is always censoring me on RI Future. The things that he won't post have the effect of pointing out the hypocrisy of the unions. If everyone can remember when the babysitters were shot down a couple of months ago, I put up a post regarding that. They wouldn't let it be seen. that is because the guy who runs it is part of the SEIU and they got their butts handed to them and he just couldn't deal with it. Then there was another when he was talking about how "BLUE CROSS sucks". I put up something very reasonable pointing out Frank Montanaro's involvement with Blue Cross. Nope - RI Pop would have none of that. He did, however, have his own pathetic tearjerking defense of Montanaro shortly after he wouldn't post mine. What a jerk. I could see if they were rude or crude but that was definitely not the case. It is funny how those liberals can't debate the issues. They must teach him how to do that that at his union meetings.

Posted by: Pollise at January 4, 2006 11:31 AM

Marc, all those groups have as much to do with education as the NEA does. ;-)
What a pathetic group they are huh?

Posted by: Tim at January 4, 2006 6:45 PM

I also have had comments deleted from that liberal RI blog, and interestingly, the topic I found totally off limits, like Pollise, was the child care providers attempt to unionize.

I must say that things have gotten better, and comments haven't been deleted recently.

Here's a post on my blog (6/26/05) that includes an interesting e-mail response from the blog's technical webmaster.
http://rightri.com/C910526731/E273131839/index.html

Posted by: rightri at January 4, 2006 8:56 PM

Well that answers that, rightri. We now have proof that those sniffling liberals at RI Future have to censor comments to stifle dissent. i read your link, (and your blog - very nice - I've bookmarked it)

The funny thing is even his webmaster knows that RIPopulist "does make it somewhat of a standard practice to delete comments"

Have you ever seen such sophomoric rants? I mean what do those people do all day - they obviously don't work in the real world. I'll bet they all live off the taxpayers. I guess that is why they are always coming up with more ways to take our hardearned money for themselves. If they worked half as hard at an honest endeavor they'd be much better off.

Posted by: Pollise at January 4, 2006 11:28 PM

Hi!
The media should be more attentive to what EXTENT the teachers union,other unions,business,and special interest groups, involves in politically it in local politics in our communities in Rhode Island and state wide.This includes NOT only candidates but also refendums and those districys like mine that still have the "town meeting"format.While I can't really venture much of an opinion but I assume you have been following the North Kingstown situation and their Supt.Halley?
Regards,
Scott

Posted by: Scott Bill Hirst at January 11, 2006 10:59 AM