The Patriot Post Chronicle 9-12-2012

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The Patriot Post Chronicle 9-12-2012
From The Federalist Patriot
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Teachers Strike, Children Suffer

September 12, 2012

The Foundation

"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." --Samuel Adams

Editorial Exegesis

"Labor Day may have passed, but in Chicago school is still out for the summer. That's because, for the first time in more than 25 years, the brothers and sisters of the Chicago Teachers Union are striking. Though they are already among the best-paid educators in the country, making an average of $76,000 per year in salary -- plus benefits -- the union is unsatisfied with an offer from the city's board of education that provides them a 16 percent raise over four years, worth a total of $400 million. (The CTU's original offer was for a 30 percent raise over two years.) Accounts from both sides indicate that the sticking points are the maintenance of the union's lavish benefits structure and a teacher-evaluation system that labor officials worry could -- horror -- result in the firing of large numbers of its most ineffective members. On the merits, the case isn't close. Chicago teachers currently pay just 3 percent of their own health-care costs, and nearly three-quarters of new education spending over the last five years has been gobbled up by their retirement costs. ... The proximate consequence of the union's intransigence is that a mass of youths won't be in classrooms, but on Chicago's increasingly murderous streets. The contrast with the city's 45,000 charter-school students, along with its parochial- and private-school enrollees -- all of whom remain in their classrooms -- is stark. The benefits of school choice are manifold, but not least among them is that your child's education needn't be held hostage by the whims of public employees who finance and staff the campaigns of their putative bargaining 'adversaries.' That sort of thing doesn't happen in competitive markets. ... Political reality alone ought to force the Democrats to push labor for a quick agreement that maintains most of the cost-saving concessions, at least cosmetically preserves the teacher-evaluation model, and, most important, gets Chicago kids back to school. Whether this happens will say much about who wears the pants in the liberal coalition." --National Review1

Upright

"Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis walks, talks and barks like a rootsy Occupy Wall Street activist. ... When she's not urging other teachers to ditch the classroom or organizing traffic blockades to impede everyone else in Chicago from getting to and from their jobs, Lewis spends her time trashing public charter schools and business leaders trying to reform our Soviet-style monopoly in education. The results speak for themselves: While CTU members earn an average of $74,000 a year and are now spurning 16 percent pay hikes, 71 percent of the third-largest school district's 8th-grade students can't attain the most basic level of science proficiency, and nearly 80 percent are not grade-level proficient in reading. ... It bears repeating often: The goals of the teachers union radicals are not academic excellence, professional development and fairness. The goals are student indoctrination, social upheaval and perpetual grievance-mongering in pursuit of bigger government and spending without restraint: 2, 4, 6, 8! One agenda: Agitate!" --columnist Michelle Malkin

"[Yesterday], the U.S. embassy in Cairo was attacked, stormed, and the U.S. flag was torn down by a bunch of crazy Egyptians emboldened by the Arab Spring. Yet Barack Obama felt he needed to issue an apology. ... On the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. ... According to CNN, Obama's Administration issued a statement saying that it 'condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims -- as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.' America is apologizing for those who would 'hurt the religious feelings of Muslims?' Did Buddhists kill 3,000 Americans on September 11? How about Hindus? Or, Zoroastrians? Or any of the other 21 major faiths that exist on the Earth? ... Even though everyone believes this election is going to be about the economy, a few more boneheaded days like yesterday might well make Obama's inept handling of foreign policy a major issue. If I have hurt your feelings ... I'm so sorry." --columnist Rich Galen

Editor's Note: Libyan Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three embassy staff were killed by al-Qa'ida jihadis in Benghazi late yesterday in retaliation for a film they decided insulted Mohammed. In other words, their religious feelings were hurt, so someone had to die. This is the barbarous enemy we face.

"[Sandra Fluke] completed her education a few weeks ago -- at the age of 31, or Grade 25. Before going to Georgetown, she warmed up with a little light BS in Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies from Cornell. She then studied law at one of the most prestigious institutions in the nation, where tuition costs 50 grand a year. ... Sandra Fluke has been blessed with a quarter-million dollars of elite education, and ... is entirely incapable of making a coherent argument. ... Sexual liberty, even as every other liberty withers, is all that matters: A middle-school girl is free to get an abortion without parental consent, but if she puts a lemonade stand on her lawn she'll be fined. What a bleak and reductive concept of 'personal freedom.'" --columnist Mark Steyn

Essential Liberty

"The problem with Medicare is not just that its current formula is unsustainable, or that Obama diverted a staggering amount of projected future spending on it into yet another bank-breaking entitlement. It is that the national government is innately incapable of running an entitlement program. ... As constituted, our government offered two visions of 'providing for the general welfare.' First is the Madisonian principle that Congress's capacity to tax and spend is strictly limited to its enumerated powers -- which do not include running social-welfare programs. The second is a Hamiltonian gloss, giving Congress additional latitude, provided that its schemes benefit all Americans equally -- which would preclude welfare programs that take from A for the benefit of B. Once you abandon these moorings, once you accept a wealth-redistribution system in which government becomes the arbiter of 'social justice,' the ball game is over." --former DoJ attorney Andrew McCarthy