ALABAMA: Former AEA leaders say organization is being ‘occupied’ by national teachers’ union

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Former Alabama Education Association (AEA) leaders are lashing out at the teachers’ union’s current trusteeship under its parent organization, the National Education Association (NEA), saying in a letter that the AEA is being “occupied” by the NEA.

The letter, dated July 2nd, is signed by former AEA leaders Joe Reed and Nancy Worley—who are both currently leaders within the Alabama Democratic Party—as well as four former AEA presidents.

“This letter comes to express our deep concern over the current ‘Takeover’ of the Alabama

Education Association (AEA) by the National Education Association (NEA) in the name of Trusteeship,” they wrote. “Under the facts and circumstances of the current ‘Takeover,’ there are no grounds for NEA to occupy AEA.”

“Don’t force us to fight an organization we love, respect and support,” the authors continued. “This is an ‘internal family issue,’ but the House is severely Divided. We all know that a House Divided cannot stand. It is going to take many years to repair the damage already done.”

That damage is a tumultuous change in leadership after longtime power broker and boss Paul Hubbert retired, then passed away, coupled with drastic changes in the state legislature—where Hubbert wielded unprecedented power—the AEA’s 2014 was disastrous.

Even after spending approximately $20 million during the primary and general elections, the AEA’s PAC, A-VOTE, failed to win a single seat for the candidates it supported. According to their most recent 990 form, the AEA spent $8.5 million more than it took in during Fiscal Year 2014.

“Finally,” the letter concludes, “NEA is occupying our organization illegally and without justification. NEA should call the Special Trustee home because if the NEA continues to trespass, the AEA, the strong organization we built over the past 45 years, will be DEAD! We do not concede that the NEA Trusteeship is legal and we are determined to take our association back!”

Both Reed and Worley told the Montgomery Advertiser they had not received a reply from the NEA.

Reed highlighted his particular concern that the NEA’s Trustee would dissolve the AEA’s 46-year-old merger with the predominately black Alabama State Teachers’ Association.

“There are certain things that are there and ought to stay there, for instance, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” he said. “The merger agreement we have has got to stay.”

AEA president Sheila Hocutt Remington said in a statement Tuesday that the letter was “inaccurate” and “designed to divert attention from the positive direction AEA is taking to support educators and Alabama schools.”

“AEA is successful because it has been a member-driven association for more than 150 years,” she said. “While some people will always be uncomfortable with change and will cling to vestiges of the past, AEA and its membership is focused on what matters most – preparing students for a new school year that will begin throughout Alabama next week.”

While the AEA and the Alabama Democratic party were virtually synonymous for years, the NEA often tacks even further left than its Alabama affiliate.

Via: YellowhammerContinue Reading....

CALIFORNIA: SCOTUS’ Decision To Hear Friedrichs Case Has Unions In A Tizzy

On June 30^th, the Supreme Court decided to hear Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association et al, a case that could seriously change the way the public employee unions (PEUs) do business. If the plaintiffs are victorious, teachers, nurses, sanitation workers, etc. would be able to work without the financial burden of paying union dues. The responses to the Court’s decision from the teachers unions and their friends have ranged from silly to contradictory to blatantly dishonest.

In a rare event, leaders of the NEA, AFT, CTA, AFSCME and SEIU released a joint statement explaining that worker freedom would be a catastrophe for the Republic. Clutching their hankies, they told us that, “big corporations and the wealthy few are rewriting the rules in their favor, knocking American families and our entire economy off-balance.” And then, with an obvious attempt at eliciting a gasp, “…the Supreme Court has chosen to take a case that threatens the fundamental promise of America.” (Perhaps the labor bosses misunderstood the wording of the preamble to the Constitution, “In order to form a more perfect union….” No, this was not an attempt to organize workers.) While the U.S. is not without its problems, removing forced unionism will hardly dent the “fundamental promise of America.”

The California Federation of Teachers, which typically is at the forefront of any class warfare sorties, didn’t disappoint. The union claims on its website that the activity of union foes “has resulted in a sharp decline in median wages for working people and the decline of the middle class alongside the increasing concentration of income and wealth in the hands of the one per cent.” But wait a minute – the unions are the most potent political force in the country today and have been for a while. According to Open Secrets, between 1989-2014, the much maligned one-percenter Koch Brothers ranked 59^th in political donations behind 18 different unions. The National Education Association was #4 at $53,594,488 and the American Federation of Teachers was 12^that $36,713,325, while the Kochs spent a measly $18,083,948 during that time period. Also, as Mike Antonucci reports, the two national teachers unions, NEA and AFT, spend more on politics than AT&T, Goldman Sachs, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, General Electric, Chevron, Pfizer, Morgan Stanley, Lockheed Martin, FedEx, Boeing, Merrill Lynch, Exxon Mobil, Lehman Brothers, and the Walt Disney Corporation, combined.”

Via: California Political Review

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Teachers Union Determined to Purge Koch Brothers from College Campuses

The National Education Association’s mission to drive Charles and David Koch, the two wealthy philanthropist brothers from Kansas, into the sea is showing no signs of slowing down. According to its latest Labor Department filing, the nation’s biggest union gifted $150,000 (up from a mere $100,000 the year before) to the American Bridge, a leftist hit-PAC whose mission is to annihilate every politico whose politics run to the right of the late Joe Stalin. (Nothing new here: Over the years, NEA has lavished gifts on such leftist stalwarts as MALDEF, People for the American Way, Media Matters, ACORN, Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and Occupy Wall Street.)

The American Bridge’s latest gambit is to remove the Koch brothers’ influence from 250 campuses where they support educational initiatives in economics, philosophy, entrepreneurship, criminal justice and other disciplines. A recent case in point: Mississippi State will soon launch the Institute for Market Studies, which was made possible in part by a $365,000 grant from the Charles Koch Foundation. But before its launch, American Bridge filed an open-records request seeking emails between professors, and between the school’s faculty and the Koch foundation. This is nothing more than an intimidation tactic to discourage the faculty from participating in the venture.

Sadly the above is hardly an isolated incident. “UnKoch My Campus,” another group of NEA fellow travelers, is busy all over the country trying rid our schools of the dreaded brothers. From the NEA website,

Between 2005 and 2013, the billionaire Koch brothers spent at least $68 million on college and university campuses — to fund faculty, research and publications, and to spread their anti-worker gospel to generations of students.

Last week, NEA Higher Ed faculty and staff leaders sat down in a windowless room in Orlando, Fla., and pledged to shine a light on those Koch campus investments — as well as the pernicious effects of the broad ‘corporatization’ of public higher education.

‘This is about corporate interests trying to control higher education. The Koch brothers are just one of those interests,’ said Theresa Montano, president of NEA’s National Council for Higher Education, who called for greater transparency of where that money goes and what exactly it buys.

Via: California Political Review

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'Evil' Koch brothers just 59th on top political donation list

Sometimes, if you listen to some Democrats, they're running against the "Evil" Koch brothers rather than a specific Republican candidate.

The brothers that liberals like to hate are often trotted out as prime examples of why campaign finance reform is necessary. They are often portrayed as one of the biggest contributors to political candidates, their evil money financing evil Republicans.

The group OpenSecrets.com has compiled a list of top donors to candidates and, to the left's surprise, the Koch brothers are far down the list.

Washington Examiner:

Charles and David Koch are the two most evil people in American politics, right? We know that because Jane Mayer proved it with her landmark "Covert Operations" tour de liberal force in 2010.

Well, it turns out that Mayer's aim was off just a little, by like 58 slots on the all-time biggest donors in American politics list, as compiled by OpenSecrets.org.

OpenSecrets.org tallied the top donors in federal elections between 1989 and 2014. Koch Industries -- privately owned by the Evil Koch Bros -- is on the list, to be sure, but doesn't appear until the 59th slot, with $18 million in donations, 90 percent of which went to Republicans.

Unions, unions, unions

So who occupies the 58 spots ahead of the Evil Koch Bros? Six of the top 10 are ... wait for it ... unions. They gave more than $278 million, with most of it going to Democrats.

These are familiar names: AFSCME ($60.6 million), NEA ($53.5 million), IBEW ($44.4 million), UAW ($41.6 million), Carpenters & Joiners ($39.2 million) and SEIU ($38.3 million).

In other words, the six biggest union donors in American politics gave 15 times more to mostly Democrats than the Evil Koch Bros.

Via: American Thinker

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California: Getting Criminals Out of Schools

A new bill would keep pedophiles and violent criminals out of our schools; teachers unions balk. California law firm decides to try an end run.

A couple of weeks ago in Washington, D.C., the House of Representatives passed a bill by a simple voice vote, which stipulated that public schools would be barred from employing teachers and other school employees who have been convicted of sexual offenses or violent crimes against children.

“Keeping children safe is not a partisan issue,” said the chief sponsor, Rep. George Miller, D-Calif. “It’s a moral obligation.”

“Every school employee, from the cafeteria workers to the administrators, to janitors to the teachers, principals and librarians, that everyone” is subject to background checks including the FBI fingerprint identification system to the national sex offender registry, said Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Ind.

Now just whom do you suspect might take issue with such a law?  

Go to the head of the class if you responded “teachers unions.” Both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers sent letters to Congress complaining about the proposed legislation. The NEA missive starts off with,

On behalf of the more than three million members of the National Education Association and the students they serve, we would like to offer the following views on H.R. 2083 to require criminal background checks for school employees, which will be voted on tomorrow. (Emphasis added.)

On behalf of students? Did I miss something here? Has NEA forced students – as they do teachers in 26 states – to become beholden to the union? The rest of the letter is no better, and includes one truly bizarre comment. “…criminal background checks often have a huge, racially disparate impact.”

They do? Which race should get a pass? Would NEA be more in favor of the bill if it had a racially proportionate number of pedophiles? (Note to teachers: ya think maybe it’s time to stop supporting the loopy antics of NEA?)

Via: California Political Review

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$140,000 in Art Grants Went to Group that Features Vagina Videos

A Los Angeles-based art group that has received $140,500 in taxpayer funding is promoting an obscene video on its website that ends with a man screaming into a vagina.

The Center for Individual Freedomreports that the video is one of six displayed on the homepage of ”L.A. Freewaves.” The National Endowment for the Arts has given the group 10 grants, and most recently paid $50,000 for Freewaves to create “bus art.”

The National Endowment for the Arts did not finance the vagina video.

“When it’s not assaulting the senses of L.A. bus riders, Freewaves uses tax dollars to feature controversial videos such as ‘Between,’ which is currently on the home page of the group’s website,” the Center for Individual Freedom said.

“The clip, which would offend many of the taxpayers who helped to subsidize its creation, shows blurry close-ups of various body parts over a bed of muffled talking and electronic whirs, until it concludes with a man yelling repeatedly into a nude woman’s vagina.”

In a statement to the Washington Free Beacon, cofounder of Freewaves Anne Bray said the video did not receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

“This particular video comes from Brazil in 2002 as part of our Latin American Freewaves,” she said. “It was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA) one day and in a private gallery for one month. NEA funding was not applicable to either of those events.”

Via: WFB

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Let’s Flush the Bathroom Bill

A new California law is agenda driven, hurts kids and is totally unnecessary.

A look back through recent history reveals that legislators and the educational establishment, taking its marching orders from the teachers unions, have needlessly foisted sexuality into children’s lives. The radical agenda of the activists seeks to divest children of any prudish, old-world morality imposed upon them by their clueless, Neanderthal parents. Just a few cases in point:

• In 2004, the National Education Association gave its prestigious Human Rights Award to Kevin Jennings, founder of the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN). This is the group that presided over the infamous “Fistgate” conference held at Tufts University in Massachusetts in March 2000, where state employees gave explicit instructions about “fisting” and other forms of gay sexual activity to children as young as 12. The conference was secretly recorded and its extraordinarily vile contents can be heard here.

• At a UN conference in 2011, Diane Schneider, an NEA Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Trainer of Trainers, said “Oral sex, masturbation, and orgasms need to be taught in education.” She told this to the audience at a panel on combating homophobia and transphobia. Additionally, she advocated for more “inclusive” sex education in US schools, with curricula based on “liberal hetero and homosexual expression.” Lest parents think they could just excuse their child from that class, she claimed that the idea of sex education “remains an oxymoron if it is abstinence based, or if students are still able to opt-out.” She then added that comprehensive sex education is “the only way to combat heterosexism and gender conformity.”

“Gender identity expression and sexual orientation are a spectrum,” she explained, and said that those opposed to homosexuality “are stuck in a binary box that religion and   family create.”

• Later in 2011, with a $1,500 grant from the California Teachers Association, a group called Gender Spectrum presented some rather interesting lessons over two days to the entire school of 350 students. The specifics were reported by Fox News, which was invited to sit in on the lessons.

Joel Baum, director of education and training for Gender Spectrum, taught the classes. In the kindergarten class he asked the 5- and 6-year-olds to identify if a toy was a “girl toy” or a “boy toy” or both. He also asked which students liked the color pink, prompting many to raise their hands, to which he responded that boys can like pink, too.

Via: California Political Review

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Shutdown Ad Campaign By Union Targets Republicans

WASHINGTON -- Upping the stakes of the government shutdown, one of the largest U.S. labor unions is unveiling a six-figure ad campaign on Friday that accuses Tea Party members of Congress of facilitating the breakdown of government.

The campaign, spearheaded by the National Education Association, will include television and online ads that will air in Washington and other markets. The targets, according to a union release, include Reps. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Jeff Fortenberry (R-Neb.), Tom Latham (R-Iowa), and Chris Collins (R-N.Y.).

The ad wars over the shutdown have so far been somewhat muted, likely because it was impossible to predict how long it would last. But with the standoff now well into its second week and likely heading towards its third -- and with polls showingRepublican lawmakers vulnerable -- it appears that interest groups like NEA are ready to pounce. 

Via: Huffington Post

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