Posted on 10/21/2002 10:49:37 AM PDT by xsysmgr
One week after Al Gore conceded Florida's hotly contested 2000 election and George W. Bush became president, the Democrat-controlled teachers' union in the state began to take its revenge on the Republican party.
On December 20, 2000, the Florida Education Association signed a new mortgage on its Tallahassee headquarters. Two years later, the $1.7 million in equity the FEA sucked out of its South Adams Street building is being used to pummel President Bush's brother, Jeb, as he attempts to become Florida's first Republican governor to win reelection. Since January, the FEA has spent $1.5 million supporting Democrat Bill McBride against Jeb, and the two candidates are now tied in polls.
Confronted with their annual reports to the U.S. Department of Labor listing a $1,002,954 mortgage in 2000, and a $2,723,085 mortgage the next year, FEA President Maureen Dinnen doesn't deny leveraging her union's headquarters for a single political candidate. "We were authorized to extend as many funds as needed because our people are so upset about the situation in Florida," she insists. Dinnen claims in May 2001 the FEA's delegate assembly gave her "not exactly a blank check," but the authority to do whatever was necessary to defeat the younger Bush — who supports vouchers and standardized testing for Florida students.
But Dinnen and her cohorts didn't wait to see whether the Democratic nominee would be any more sympathetic to their demands than Jeb Bush before offering up their teachers' building. Public records from Leon Country, Florida show that the FEA took out a new mortgage with Capital City Bank six months before the delegate assembly allegedly ordered its "hit" on Jeb, and 13 months before it endorsed Bill McBride over former attorney general Janet Reno and two other Democrats in the primary.
Asked about this telling timeline, Dinnen responds: "I'm not comfortable talking about that. Whatever we did to secure those funds, I know it was legal and we have nothing to be ashamed of. As far as giving you exact dates, I'm not comfortable doing that. I'm not a financial person."
Try pleading a phobia of numbers with Florida's math teachers — whose union dues probably paid for the South Adams Street building that Dinnen and the FEA's leadership leveraged in their campaign to destroy Jeb Bush.
The FEA says the money its companion organization, Quality Public Education Corp (QPEC), has poured into television commercials for McBride is largely from teachers' union dues. It may be that the cashed-out equity from the FEA's headquarters didn't go straight into the McBride effort, but it just happened to free up $1.5 million in union dues for politicking. (Class, can you spell "fungible"?)
If McBride wins — thanks in part to the FEA gambling the teachers' building — its members won't have to deal with Jeb Bush holding them accountable for student performance anymore. They'd better hope that payoff is worth the hike in union dues to pay off the extra interest on a mortgage $1.7 million higher than it was before their leadership sought revenge against the Bushes in December, 2000.
]
— Bernadette Malone is a columnist for the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader and an editor at Regnery Publishing in Washington, D.C.
McBride/McAuliffe Seeks to Block Funding Probe teacher's union involved in campaign ads, Sept. 25, Miami Herald. Elections commission may subpoena McBride over adsSept. 27, AP. McBride Campaign Entwines With Teachers Union (FEA). Teachers Union a Factor in Fla., McBride is bought. Dems Got Nearly All Teacher Union Contributions, Report States
I think that you've really hit on something. This really is a case of mortgaging union member dues, which means that the Supreme Court's "Beck" decision could become a factor (i.e. the SCOTUS ruled that union members can recover all union dues spent for political purposes with which they disagree)...
Hey Southack - you're great at calling the winner of a horse race before the race is even half run.
BTW - Are you still in business, or has all your work been outsourced to India/Pakistan/Russia?
The economic situation, especially for high tech is NOT getting better, it's a structural problem.
I hear Singapore is getting hot for outsource work.
I've almost got more business than I can handle. It seems as though my out-of-state competitors no longer have the resources available to compete effectively with me. Too bad for them.
And why would I outsource work anywhere now that there is such an available surplus of American talent? Singapore is hot? Only the weather. People who outsource to Singapore and China are 9 times out of 10 "first time" outsourcers. They'll learn later on just how bad the quality and how eggregiously those shops miss deadlines, and God only knows that they can't handle a simple spec change once the process has started (which rules out 95% of all American software projects - as we like to change our minds at the last moment to frequently keep up with our dynamic environment).
If by "economic problem" for high tech you mean that the easy-money-boom-times are gone, then yes, I agree. On the other hand, just because the easy money is gone doesn't mean that all of the money is gone from high tech. Technology has its place, and companies will always be willing to pay for certain technological improvements.
Am I shedding any tears for my competitors who don't have my level of staying power, however?! Hardly.
Gee, contracts no longer have 200% markups. Who woulda thunk that such easy money was only transient, rather than a permanent fixture?!
Tell that to corporate America, as outsourcing is accelerating (saves companies on average 2/3 of cost of project).
Sure, corporate America is outsourcing, but not so much overseas as to other American firms like my own.Outsourcing makes sense, however. Most companies aren't in the software business. In other business aspects, companies already outsource when the work involved isn't their primary line of business. For instance, most companies employ external legal aid rather than hire their own attorneys. Most firms employ outside plumbers rather than hire their own. Most firms employ external print shops rather than hire the graphics designers and purchase Heidelberg presses.
So it's only natural that non-software companies outsource their software development rather than hire a bunch of programmers themselves.
But outsource to Singapore or India?! Man, I've been there and done that, and there just isn't the quality, timeliness, and flexibility needed for most dynamic American corporations. One of our India projects, for instance, was getting email responses from the Indian director that all was fine up until the deadline, at which point he never wrote to us again, even when we held back his checks. We later learned that he had simply found something else (presumably less difficult) to do and moved on without telling anyone (OK, without telling us, his client). That might be fine in India's culture (and some of their programmers who have made it to America are decent), but it clearly isn't the way that American businesses want to operate. Fortuneately, for us it was a small project but a big lesson that confirmed our experiences with other, similar offshore efforts.
So the truth finally comes out, you run an outsouring hi-tech firm, even outsouring to India.
I'm sure our out-of-work hi-tech FReepers will appreciate your future posts (/sarcasm).
Only if they're looking for work in Alabama.
Only if they're looking for work in Alabama.
or India.
This desperation is so that a Dem governor can give the Teachers Union more POWER and more MONEY. IOW, they are doing this for their own profit...mortgaging property paid for by the taxpayers to line their own pockets.
Yeah, but since when was it such a big feat to point out that in a two-horse race that one side was conceding?!
I can't wait to hear the fuzzy rationalizations that the FEA will no doubt use when they are short money in 2004 (gee, not much voter backlash against Bush in Florida, I guess)...
Swaps even though his leg was hurting didn't "concede" his match race in 1955 to Nassau.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.