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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 Washington, 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...

Court affirms teachers’ right to an independent audit of the union’s financial records FOR RELEASE: April 4, 2003 HARRISBURG, Penn. (April 4, 2003) — In a long-running civil rights suit brought by Pennsylvania teachers, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that local affiliates of the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) union must have their books independently audited to justify how they spend teachers’ compulsory union fees. The ruling came in a case brought by Marsha Otto and six other non-union Pennsylvania teachers who challenged how PSEA union officials were spending their compulsory dues. The teachers, who were...

<p>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.</p> <p>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.</p>

As you all know, as conservatives, we believe it is good sometimes to spank our kids and our wife (ahem), as well as make love to the wife and tickle the children. Why? Because emotions of pleasure and pain etc, have a tendency to hard wire a learned fact. It is called the law of effect, and it is the enemy's strategy that aims at bypassing reason. The left is crude because the left is in a long range process of rewiring what people were taught at birth. They do not go beyond that, yet the scary thing is they...

The Massachusetts Teachers Association's former finance director is under investigation after the theft of $802,000 from the prominent labor union, in what association leaders described as a ''sophisticated embezzlement scheme.'' Union executives learned of the theft in September and fired the employee, who allegedly gave MTA officials a description of how he had concealed his actions for almost seven years through accounting methods, according to a letter sent to union members this week. State Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly's office is expected to announce charges against Richard Anzivino of Needham this week, according to two sources involved with the case....

National Legal and Policy Center -- Organized Labor Accountability Project   UNION CORRUPTION UPDATE   March 3, 2003 -- Vol. 6, Issue 5 For Influential Leaders & Important Decision Makers: Information on America's most corrupt & aggressive unions   AFL-CIO / PLUMBERS / ULLICOExec. Council Meets in Hotel Boondoggle Fed with Union PensionsWhat a tangled web they weave -- the AFL-CIO's Executive Council met the last week of Feb. in a Florida hotel that has become a boondoggle funded with union pensions.  And this boondoggle was made possible by the union-pension-owned insurance company now under criminal investigation for insider stock...

<p>As many as 40 mobsters and members of a union being probed for taking no-show jobs in the Ground Zero cleanup will be busted today for similar schemes at other city construction sites, sources told The Post yesterday.</p> <p>After a long-running organized-crime probe, FBI agents are planning to arrest members of the International Union of Operating Engineers Locals 14 and 15 in a series of early-morning raids.</p>

Officials charged with diverting $5 million in member dues Just before Christmas last year, federal officials raided the homes and offices of former officials of the Washington Teachers' Union (WTU) in search of goods allegedly purchased with more than $5 million in union funds.The items listed in an FBI affidavit include $500,000 in custom-made clothing, a 288-piece antique Tiffany sterling silver set, a $6,800 ice bucket, furs, alligator shoes, jewelry, artwork, wine, wigs, a 50" plasma television, and computer equipment. Agents were investigating expenditures on a Bahamas vacation and bar and nightclub tabs.Police also found a double-barrel shotgun in the...

NEW YORK, Jan. 25 (UPI) -- The National Education Association, with 2.6 million members, is the nation's largest union and one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington. One of every 12 delegates to the 2000 Democratic National Convention was a member. In fact, the NEA member contingent of 350 was larger than the entire California delegation. Any way one looks at it, that number represents real political clout. In fact, it has so much clout that William McGurn of The Wall Street Journal contends, "Those of us who have long dismissed the National Education Association as a tool of...

1) IRS Auditing California Teachers Association 2) AFT Auditors Say $5 Million Missing from DC Teachers Union 3) Unions to Face Increased Federal Regulation 4) San Francisco Anti-War Resolution Watered Down; "Day of Discussion" May Not Be 5) District Consolidation Picks Up Steam in Arkansas 6) Quotes of the Week 1) IRS Auditing California Teachers Association. Multiple sources within the California Teachers Association and the National Education Association inform EIA that the California Teachers Association is undergoing a comprehensive audit by the Internal Revenue Service. EIA has received no evidence to corroborate rumors that other NEA state affiliates are also...

<p>A gaudy little scandal has broken open at the Washington, D.C., teachers union -- just in time to illustrate the virtue of new Department of Labor rules to make union spending more accountable to its dues-paying members.</p> <p>Late last December the FBI raided the homes of officials of the Washington Teachers Union, an affiliate of the politically powerful American Federation of Teachers. The agents seized luxury goods -- mink coats, alligator shoes and a Tiffany's silver service -- that investigators say were all bought with more than $2 million stolen from member dues.</p>

By Margarita Assenova (Rigor, the fourth R: Curricula in Europeon classrooms, such as this one in Aschaffenburg, Germany, have a far bigger dose of academic subject matter than those in the United States.) Because of their heavy curriculum requirements, European students regularly surpass their American counterparts on international tests. hen English is your second or third language, it's certainly not easy to take the college-admission Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT)--let alone do well on it. Yet many European students score at the highest levels in competition with their American peers for admission to Ivy League schools in the United States. Western...

If you follow the link, you will see a breakdown state by state of the National Education Associaiton's professional and support staff salaries.

QUICK LINKS: HOME | NEWS | OPINION | RIGHTPAGES | CHAT | WHAT'S NEW townhall.comWalter Williams (back to story)January 8, 2003Washington's education establishment "Fiddling Whilst Rome Burns" was my column several weeks ago. It looked at the disastrous state of education in the nation's capitol, where at only one of the city's 19 high schools do as many as 50 percent of its students test as proficient in reading. At no school are 50 percent of the students proficient in math. At 12 of 19 high schools, more than 50 percent of the students test below basic in reading,...

<p>Last month the Labor Department proposed new rules that will require the largest labor unions to more thoroughly disclose how members' dues are spent. The reporting changes thus far have gone virtually unremarked upon, but the proposal promises to be one of the biggest shake-ups to organized labor since the governing legislation, the Landrum-Griffin Act, was first passed in 1959.</p>

<p>The Teamsters, National Education Association and other unions often are criticized for misusing their tax-exempt status and their members' union dues to lobby federal and state authorities. There also is the occasional union embezzlement story. Nothing, though, has hit as close to home as the fraud and embezzlement charges that have engulfed the Washington Teachers' Union (WTU).</p>

<p>Several months ago, auditors with the Washington Teachers' Union (WTU) and its parent organization, the American Federation of Teachers, made startling discoveries: The WTU was overcharging its members, and some of its officers were apparently lavishing themselves with furs, Tiffany silver and expensive goods from Saks and other upscale shops. Teachers and city officials are shocked and appalled at the allegations, the scope of which goes beyond the initial suspicions reported this fall.</p>

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is trying to pry open the books of labor unions to get much more detailed financial information in the annual reports they have to file with the government.</p> <p>Labor Department officials said Friday they are revamping reporting requirements for the first time in more than 40 years to force the largest unions to specify how much they spend on contract negotiations and administration, organization, strike benefits, general overhead, political activities and lobbying, and to identify those expenses.</p>

Transit Talks Continue Past Midnight Deadline DECEMBER 16TH, 2002 There will be no transit strike - at least not yet. With the morning plans of millions of commuters hanging in the balance, the MTA and New York City's transit workers are negotiating past the midnight hour in a last-ditch effort to avert a mass transit strike that could cripple the city at the height of the holiday season. Ed Watt, the secretary/treasurer of Transit Workers Union Local 100, announced at midnight that negotiators had made sufficient progess to continue their efforts past the midnight deadline. The progress, said Watt, had...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 9, 2002 PR 323-02 www.nyc.gov MAYOR MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERG ANNOUNCES CONTINGENCY PLAN FOR ILLEGAL STRIKE BY TRANSPORT WORKERS UNION Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg joined by Office of Emergency Management (OEM) Commissioner John T. Odermatt, New York Police Commissioner (NYPD) Raymond W. Kelly, Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Iris Weinshall, New York Fire Department (FDNY) Chief of Department Frank Cruthers, Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) Chair Matthew Daus and Department of Education (DOE) Chancellor Joel Klein outlined the City strike contingency plan in response to a potential illegal work stoppage by the Transport Workers Union (TWU)."A...