Fat Cat Spending Frenzy

NY Post ^ | 23 Feb 2011 | NYP Editorial Staff

[smokingfrog]

Teachers union ad challenges Andrew Cuomo's cuts--Editorial - NYPOST.com

When last we shone a light on abusive teachers-union fat cats, the focus was a 24-person roast quail feast in a posh Albany restaurant whose management had to call the cops to get the unionists to pay the check.

Today, the porky-pussycat watch yields one Richard Iannuzzi, president of New York State United Teachers -- the state's largest teachers union and the parent organization of New York City's United Federation of Teachers.

Iannuzzi will pull down roughly $300,000 in salary and benefits this year -- up 16 percent since 2008 -- and never mind that NYSUT itself is rapidly going broke under his leadership.

NYSUT, in fact, declined during that period from $28 million in positive net assets to more than $117 million in nega tive net assets last year, according to the US Department of Labor.

Iannuzzi's lush pay hike played only a small part of the dramatic decline -- more on which below.

But first let us note NYSUT's latest caper, a just-produced TV ad making fun of -- how ironic -- fat cats.

It shows a smarmy Wall Street type, snidely lecturing unseen listeners about the need for "massive budget cuts" as well as "tax breaks and subsidies for the rich and powerful" -- which means "sacrifices from people like you."

The "people like you" turn out to be two little kids, quailing before the Gordon Gekko type -- before one of them tells the exec: "You need a time out."

"Don't sacrifice their education for tax breaks for millionaires," pleads the ad.

[kittymyrib]

No one should take the Democrats seriously when they proclaim that they are “for the children.” Immediately after his inauguration, Obama and the Rats in D.C. kicked the poor children out of their fine classrooms, paid for by vouchers, and sentenced them to fail in the horrible D.C. public school system. Democrats fight tooth and nail to keep abortionists fat and happy in Planned Parenthood clinics and in abortion butcher shops all over the country, so how can those promoters of the murder of babies expect us to believe that they care one whit “for the children”?

[fella]

The RATs & unionists have used our children as human shields for so long that it has become their first response to any criticism. What they are really doing is holding our children hostage so that they will get their way or else they won't get educated. ........... Uh ............. Wait a minute. ............ They already aren't educating them.

[bert]

The funds spent on education all go to educators

The education system is for the benefit of the educators.

[smokingfrog]

One of the things I found most interesting in this particular article:

---

The union more than doubled its political spending last year, from $4.7 million to $10.4 million.

And the amount it doles out to its own directors and employees -- dozens of whom earn healthy six-figure salaries -- has mushroomed more than 38 percent over the past four years.

[Buckeye McFrog]

continuing to love the irony of seven decades’ worth of Class Warfare indoctrination turning back upon the unions who spread it

[OrioleFan]

Who was the union leader that said, “If the children wasn to be heard, they should start paying dues.”

[jackibutterfly]

I don’t get this “collective bargaining for wages” schtick. Why do they have to collectively bargain - don’t they have a pay scale? If so, how can they negotiate their wages? As a Federal employee, WE have a pay scale - there’s no negotiating, unless your supervisor wants to reward you with a promotion. Even then, I don’t think there are negotiations - he/she gives you the next upgrade on the scale. So, how do the State employees (I HATE the word “worker”.) do it?

[Tempest]

Wow, people suddenly hate the fat cats around here...