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Deja voudoun for teachers unions
Jay Greene's attempt to diminish the Wisconsin recall movement and next week's Save our Schools march in Washington is a typical Us vs. Them narrative: The unions succeed by intimidating politicians with their raw power while convincing the public that teacher unions love their children almost as much as the parents do. Maintaining this double-game is […]
Of Jonah Edelman and other braggarts
Over the weekend I saw several references online to a Youtube video of Jonah Edelman's brass discussion at the "Aspen Ideas Festival" of the legislative history of Senate Bill 7 in Illinois, which changed significant parts of teacher working conditions. In the 14-minute online version linked above, he claims substantial credit for the passage of […]
Waiting for pension Chicken Littles to admit the sky isn’t falling…
Apparently pensions invest in stock markets, and so the momentary panic that comes with stock dips becomes fodder for those who are afraid that somewhere, some retired teacher is able to pay the bills. So too, when stocks recover, pension assets recover along with other portfolios (hat tip, brim tip). I am not going to hold my […]
Bill Cronon: a quick note
Like thousands of other historians, I have admired Bill Cronon's scholarship for years and think the Wisconsin GOP was nuts to go after his emails through a public-records request of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the epitome of the solid scholar and far from the evangelizing radical I bet the Wisconsin GOP was hoping […]
Worklife after union chapter leadership
At 12:01 am on Friday, I became the immediate ex-president of the USF chapter of our faculty union, the United Faculty of Florida. My best wishes go to my successor Paul Terry, who works on the USF Polytechnic campus and (I believe) is the first chapter president from a non-Tampa campus at USF. (The faculty […]