New York Magazine presents a piece noting that the longstanding alliance between Teacher’s unions and Democrats may be close to over. That might make some sense, really — Democrats have been at the forefront of initiatives that specifically work at dismantling the public school system and also scapegoating teachers for a multitude of longstanding problems in schools. I’m a fan of unions exercising their political power — especially since it looks like even that is under threat. I’m not sure about the best way to go about that, but it is time to stop accommodating AND providing contributions and boots on the ground while getting nothing in return:
The leaders of the teachers unions have generally taken care to placate the demands of their most implacably anti-reform members without opening an irreparable breach with the administration. The unions have strong, clear-headed reasons for their caution. However strongly they disagree with Obama and the education reformers about the design of education and teacher pay, they do agree on the principle of paying teachers more. This is in contrast to Republicans, who generally support all the reformers’ accountability measures and lower public budgets as well. And the leaders recognize that the hard-line unionist position — tenure rules that make it impossible to fire even the worst-performing teachers — are nearly impossible to defend with the public.
As the leaders of the unions have equivocated, hard-liners have increasingly agitated for more direct confrontation. The leadership of this movement has fallen to Diane Ravitch, formerly a right-of-center education activist who has converted to the cause of teachers-union absolutism with an evangelical fervor, maintaining an almost superhuman schedule of public speaking and prolific blogging.
One of the real results of the Hobby Lobby decision is that the people who are compelled to discriminate against the People Not Like Them, got their door opened to them. Now that they got the chance to discriminate against women, they are now looking to discriminate against LGBT people. Because they think they get that bigotry from God and they should be free to exercise that bigotry. Is anyone going to be surprised when they sue to bring back Jim Crow? Seriously, the reason to fight like hell against all of this is that once they win against one of us, they come back to institutionalize their bigotry against the rest of us.
Religious leaders in Kansas view the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision last week as an opportunity to revive legislation that would protect their “religious freedom” — measures that gay rights advocates warn would legitimize discrimination against LGBT people.
The Associated Press reported this weekend that social conservatives believe they have an opening to bring the state’s religious freedom bill back in 2015. The legislation failed this spring; it passed the House, but stalled in the Senate after significant backlash from business groups. It would have prevented businesses from being sued if they refused to serve LGBT people for religious reasons.
May they rot in hell.
Then there’s the great state of Washington — who is set to start selling marijuana legally today. I haven’t visited there is a while….hmmm.
What’s interesting to you today?