Thursday, January 05, 2006

Teachers' Pets: The NEA gave $65 million in its members' dues to left-liberal groups last year

If we told you that an organization gave away more than $65 million last year to Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Amnesty International, AIDS Walk Washington and dozens of other such advocacy groups, you'd probably assume we were describing a liberal philanthropy. In fact, those expenditures have all turned up on the financial disclosure report of the National Education Association, the country's largest teachers union.

Under new federal rules pushed through by Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, large unions must now disclose in much more detail how they spend members' dues money. Big Labor fought hard (if unsuccessfully) against the new accountability standards, and even a cursory glance at the NEA's recent filings--the first under the new rules--helps explain why. They expose the union as a honey pot for left-wing political causes that have nothing to do with teachers, much less students.

We already knew that the NEA's top brass lives large. Reg Weaver, the union's president, makes $439,000 a year. The NEA has a $58 million payroll for just over 600 employees, more than half of whom draw six-figure salaries. Last year the average teacher made only $48,000, so it seems you're better off working as a union rep than in the classroom.

Many of the organization's disbursements--$30,000 to the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, $122,000 to the Center for Teaching Quality--at least target groups that ostensibly have a direct educational mission. But many others are a stretch, to say the least. The NEA gave $15,000 to the Human Rights Campaign, which lobbies for "lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights." The National Women's Law Center, whose Web site currently features a "pocket guide" to opposing Supreme Court nominee Sam Alito, received $5,000. And something called the Fund to Protect Social Security got $400,000, presumably to defeat personal investment accounts.

The new disclosure rules mark the first revisions since 1959 and took effect this year. "What wasn't clear before is how much of a part the teachers unions play in the wider liberal movement and the Democratic Party," says Mike Antonucci of the Education Intelligence Agency, a California-based watchdog group. "They're like some philanthropic organization that passes out grant money to interest groups."

There's been a lot in the news recently about published opinion that parallels donor politics. Well, last year the NEA gave $45,000 to the Economic Policy Institute, which regularly issues reports that claim education is underfunded and teachers are underpaid. The partisans at People for the American Way got a $51,000 NEA contribution; PFAW happens to be vehemently anti-voucher.

The extent to which the NEA sends money to states for political agitation is also revealing. For example, Protect Our Public Schools, an anti-charter-school group backed by the NEA's Washington state affiliate, received $500,000 toward its efforts to block school choice for underprivileged children. (Never mind that charter schools are public schools.) And the Floridians for All Committee, which focuses on "the construction of a permanent progressive infrastructure that will help redirect Florida politics in a more progressive, Democratic direction," received a $249,000 donation from NEA headquarters.


When George Soros does this sort of thing, at least he's spending his own money. The NEA is spending the mandatory dues paid by members who are told their money will be used to gain better wages, benefits and working conditions. According to the latest filing, member dues accounted for $295 million of the NEA's $341 million in total receipts last year. But the union spent $25 million of that on "political activities and lobbying" and another $65.5 million on "contributions, gifts and grants" that seemed designed to further those hyper-liberal political goals.

The good news is that for the first time members can find out how their union chieftains did their political thinking for them, by going to www.union-reports.dol.gov, where the Labor Department has posted the details. Union officials claim that they favored such transparency all along, but the truth is they fought the new rules hard in both Congress and the courts. Originally, the AFL-CIO said detailed disclosures were too expensive, citing compliance costs in excess of $1 billion. The final bill turned out to be $54,000, or half of what the unions spent on litigation fighting the new requirements. When Secretary Chao refused to back down, the unions took her to court, and lost.

It's well understood that the NEA is an arm of the Democratic National Committee. (Or is it the other way around?) But we wonder if the union's rank-and-file stand in unity behind this laundry list of left-to-liberal recipients of money that comes out of their pockets.

Source





BRAINWASHING 201

“Fascists have no right to speak!” yelled a left-wing protestor, stomping onto the stage at the premiere of Evan Maloney’s new film, Brainwashing 201. It was a dramatic example of what Maloney’s picture is all about—the lack of fairness on college campuses, where liberal academics turn their classrooms into pulpits for political indoctrination, while conservatives “have no right to speak.” For those who haven’t been on college campuses recently, Maloney’s documentary is eye opening. Non-left academics are harassed for their political views. Students who show a conservative bent are threatened. Military recruiters are driven off campus.

The movie builds on Maloney’s earlier work, Brainwashing 101, released in the fall of 2004. Maloney, who edits his films himself, shows a growing command of the medium, and this second effort is tighter and livelier than the first. Several times, police escort Maloney and Stuart Browning (who holds the unusual dual credits of film financier and cameraman) away from campuses. Even at Maloney’s alma mater, Bucknell, the head of campus security tries to arrest him in front of an audience. “I can understand why these guys want to shut me up. People who are abusing power usually don’t want cameras around. Fair enough. But students and professors are being punished simply because of their ideas, and somebody has to tell their story,” Maloney states in the film.

The scenes featuring Laura and Roger Freberg are a cogent demonstration of this abuse. Laura teaches psychology at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. Her husband owns a business in town and is an active Republican. During the recall election of Governor Gray Davis in 2003, people started to notice that Laura and Roger shared the same last name. “People would come into my office, close the door and say, ‘Please tell us this is a mixed marriage,’” Laura says on camera. “One colleague really lost his temper and said ‘We never would have hired you if we knew you were a Republican.’” “No one in the administration of Cal Poly is a Republican,” Roger states. “No one in Laura’s department is a Republican. I’m unaware of anyone in the school of liberal arts who is a Republican except for Laura.”

Someone attempted to break into their house, swastikas were burnt into their lawn, and their children were threatened, according to Roger. Laura suffered daily harassment at work and endured countless meetings with her dean and others to “talk about her problem.” Laura and Roger finally went to federal court and won. Afterwards, students told her they always knew she was a Republican. At first she was surprised: All she talked about were neurons. They explained: “It’s because of what you don’t say.” Accustomed to hearing liberal politics in every classroom, they knew that when a teacher didn’t discuss current events it could mean only one thing—that he or she was conservative.

Indeed, students in the film express amazement at how left-wing academics manage to wedge politics into nearly every subject. “It’s pretty inventive,” says one. “In geography class I learned that gender is socially constructed,” illustrates another. “I really don’t know why issues such as global warming, globalization, and militarism are brought up in a class in German literature,” puzzles a third student.

A university setting should be about learning, suggests Maloney. And students “are learning. They’re learning to keep their mouths shut if they don’t agree with their professors.” Professors have power over their charges, and one recent study showed that nearly a third of students fear they’ll receive a bad grade if they don’t agree with their professors’ political and social positions. Sometimes this power becomes extreme. The film interviews a Kuwaiti student who survived the August 1990 invasion by Iraq. He attended California’s Foothill College and wrote a pro-American essay praising the U.S. Constitution. A political science professor called him into his office and asked him to explain himself. He accused the student of being biased because he was Kuwaiti, threatened his visa status, and ordered him to receive regular psychological counseling.

There are also many humorous moments in the film, as when Maloney goes in search of the “Men’s Center” on various campuses. He appears at each college’s “Women’s Center” and asks for directions to their counterpart. “We figured it was like the men’s room and the women’s room. The bathrooms are right next to each other,” he states. While seemingly laughable, Maloney points out that under the federal Title IX rules that have been used to push a feminist agenda at universities, not having a “Men’s Center” might actually be illegal.

Campuses are supposed to be marketplaces of ideas where issues stand and fall on their merits. Brainwashing 201 demonstrates effectively that this is now far from the case.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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