Free Republic

Ever since the dawn of the age of unions, it has been a given that, even if society allows the concept of strikes against private business, it is illogical to allow striking against the government. Government employers are special cases, with monopoly status, providing necessary services (at least in theory). Everyone knows you cannot allow employees of the military, the police, the fire stations, the schools, the gas and electric utilities, etc. to strike. Society simply is no longer civilized, after awhile without these building blocks of a safe and civil society. And even so, some states do foolishly, self-destructively,...

Celebrities are showing their support for Los Angeles teachers, who walked off the job Monday, the union’s first strike in 30 years. After nearly two years of talks, negotiations, talks between officials at the Los Angeles United School District and the United Teachers Los Angeles union broke down Friday over issues of wages, the expansion of charter schools, class sizes and staffing levels. Approximately 30,000 UTLA members, including school nurses and librarians as well as teachers are off the job as of today with about 500,000 students affected. Charter and private schools in L.A. are not affected by the strike....

Having spent the better part of a week asking teachers why they'd risk a public backlash by going on strike, I've concluded that the answer is best summed up by what one told me at their Labor Day rally: "Mayor Emanuel's pushed us to the limit. He's the world's biggest asshole." Actually, I think he may have dropped the F-bomb once—or twice. But I'm trying to clean things up since this is a family newspaper, dammit! But here's the bottom line: so much of this fight is fueled by the animosity of thousands of teachers toward one man. Emanuel increased...

As a union member from a union family whose grandfather was shot and wounded by company goons in a railroad strike, my sympathies are with the teachers in their walkout against the Chicago Public Schools. That doesn’t mean I agree with them on every point of conflict in their battle with school officials and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, but I tend to at least see their point of view. In the first place, I fully support their decision to go on strike, although I sure wish they hadn’t. The mayor can stand up every day and say the strike was unnecessary...

Recieved the following in an email Who feeds these bums? you guys will dig this.....and you certainly won't hear it on the local commie news channels..... Big teachers strike going on in chicago. All the troglodytes that took the easy road in college and spent more time dancin on the bar than doing homework got together and demanded stupid ridiculous raises, immunities, and 'no penalty for horrible performance' clauses. In other words, all these former sorrority chicks and 'campus social activists' got together, took some days off and hit up the malls downtown to get their new Iphones. My favorite...

CFMPL is pleased to present the thoughts of a striking teacher from the City of Chicago. We have requested the teacher to publish these thoughts anonymously so that this educator could feel 100% free to equally balance out both sides of the story as it impacts the teacher. This is neither an endorsement nor a condemnation of the strike, but it is presented for the reader to get a little insight into the teacher’s perspective on this issue. So the strike has started out very interestingly this morning. To paraphrase from the opening of A Tale of Two Cities, it’s...

More Hope and Change… Mike Klonsky, an Obama supporter and former associate of the radicals who formed the terrorist group the Weatherman, received a $175,000 grant from the William Ayers/Barack Obama-led Annenberg Challenge to run the Small Schools Workshop. Klonsky belonged to the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and was best friends with friends William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn who later became famous for their acts of terrorism. Later he started a blog on the Obama website: Between 1979 and 1981, Communist Party chairman and Obama supporter Mike Klonsky was repeatedly feted with state-dinner-level visits to Beijing. And get...

Rush Limbaugh: Chicago strike is Democratic ‘setup’ By: Kevin Robillard September 10, 2012 03:14 PM EDT Rush Limbaugh said Monday a strike by the 26,000-member Chicago Teachers’ Union was nothing but a ploy to help President Barack Obama’s reelection. “Let’s just see how long this thing goes on, and let’s see how it gets solved,” the conservative talk show host said on his radio show. “Anybody want to bet against me that Obama’s the one that gets credit for this, in a few short days? Anybody want to bet that there might be a little bit of violence and finally...

U.S. Department of Education: 79% of Chicago 8th Graders Not Proficient in Reading By Terence P. Jeffrey September 10, 2012 (CNSNews.com) - Seventy-nine percent of the 8th graders in the Chicago Public Schools are not grade-level proficient in reading, according to the U.S. Department of Education, and 80 percent are not grade-level proficient in math. Chicago public school teachers went on strike on Monday and one of the major issues behind the strike is a new system Chicago plans to use for evaluating public school teachers in which student improvement on standardized tests will count for 40 percent of a...

Via Gateway Pundit, I’ve diagnosed the situation and can offer a prognosis: Wrist slaps for everyone. These UW Health physicians were acting on their own and without the knowledge or approval of UW Health. These charges are very serious and in response, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health and University of Wisconsin Medical Foundation, the UW Health entities that employ the physicians, have immediately launched an investigation of the reported behavior.The investigation will identify which UW Health physicians were involved and whether their behavior constituted violations of medical ethics or University of Wisconsin and UW Health policies...

Have you seen video of the teacher protests that are going on in Wisconsin? We haven't seen anything like this in America in quite some time. If you haven't seen video of the protests yet, some very good raw footage is posted below. On the one hand it is good to see Americans coming together and standing up for what they believe in, but on the other hand what these teachers are freaking out about shows just how much America has changed. These teachers are not protesting for liberty, freedom or to change the government. Rather, they are protesting because...

Vacation is gone before it gets here By Diane Brooks Times Snohomish County bureau MARYSVILLE — A whimper escaped from 12-year-old Joey Fredenburg when he heard the news yesterday: Summer vacation won't start until July 17. "This is a total change, going from normal summers, to a really long summer, and now it's going to be a half-as-long summer," said the Cedarcrest School seventh-grader. A whopping 15 vacation days — including six around Christmas and New Year's Day and two for spring break in May — are included on a proposed calendar for the remaining school year. Bargaining teams for...

CHICAGO -- Gurnee teachers will walk the picket line beginning Wednesday morning, NBC5's Jennifer Mitchell reported. About 7,200 students attend classes in Woodland Elementary School District 50, which includes Gurnee, Gauges Lake, Wildwood, Park City and Grayslake. Teachers held a rally at union headquarters Tuesday evening, Mitchell further reported. In addition to the more than 550 teachers going on strike, about 300 custodians and bus drivers will also walk off the job, Mitchell reported. Beginning Wednesday morning, all four schools in District 50 will be forced to close, affecting 7,200 students in grades kindergarten through eighth, Mitchell reported. All before-...

CHICAGO -- Gurnee teachers will walk the picket line beginning Wednesday morning, NBC5's Jennifer Mitchell reported. About 7,200 students attend classes in Woodland Elementary School District 50, which includes Gurnee, Gauges Lake, Wildwood, Park City and Grayslake. Teachers held a rally at union headquarters Tuesday evening, Mitchell further reported. In addition to the more than 550 teachers going on strike, about 300 custodians and bus drivers will also walk off the job, Mitchell reported. Beginning Wednesday morning, all four schools in District 50 will be forced to close, affecting 7,200 students in grades kindergarten through eighth, Mitchell reported. All before-...