NEA 'reaching out' from the left to GOP

NEW ORLEANS — The president of the National Education Association acknowledges that the union is left-wing politically and 90 percent pro-Democrat but says he wants to reach out more to Republicans.

"I think many [Republican leaders in the Bush administration and Congress] feel as though we may not support as many Republicans as Democrats. That has been true in the past," NEA President Reg Weaver told The Washington Times in an exclusive interview at the conclusion of the union's annual convention here.

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In his keynote speech to the convention, Mr. Weaver challenged Education Secretary Rod Paige's comment that the NEA was "a coalition of the whining" in its opposition to the No Child Left Behind Act.

"People in the schools, people in the state governments, they're not whining, they're crying," Mr. Weaver said. "All we're trying to do is to help to stop the tears."

NEA challenged on political outlays - Teacher's union fields "army of campaign workers"*** As much as one-third of the tax-exempt National Education Association's yearly $271 million income goes toward politically related activities, according to union documents filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

The documents show that the 2.7 million-member teacher's union spends millions annually to field what one critic calls an "army of campaign workers," while maintaining that it spends nothing on politics.

The NEA has avoided millions of dollars in federal and D.C. income taxes every year for political activities that are not tax-exempt, says the Landmark Legal Foundation, a Herndon-based public-interest group that has asked the IRS to investigate and recoup the money.

The NEA's Washington headquarters spends more than $47 million yearly to field a national advocacy staff called UniServ, whose 1,800 directors help screen and select political candidates for endorsement and campaign for their election.

State and local NEA affiliates spend an additional $43 million for the UniServ network, which enables the union to select, train, and fund at least one employee in each congressional district to link all 13,000 local affiliates.

"They're precinct workers," Mark R. Levin, Landmark's president, said of NEA UniServ directors. "It is the largest army of campaign workers that any organization has. They're free to do it - they just have to pay taxes on it."***

In the resolutions, NEA members supported homosexual rights; programs to teach schoolchildren to be tolerant of homosexual, bisexual and "transgendered" lifestyles; and allowing "reproductive freedom," including abortion, for teenagers. They also criticized capital punishment in the United States and called for a federally run health care program.

If your kids are in public school, these are the people teaching them. Personally, I wouldn't let my small children speak to these folks let alone have them spend 8 hours a day together.

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