I Demand A Refund For Services Unperformed

Well yeah, the Los Angeles United School District teachers will continue to get paid for providing “remote” teaching lessons online. Unlike the parents who won’t be able to return to work since the little darlings will be home all day.

My problem with teachers’ unions has always been that they are a tax payer funded entity (via teacher-paid dues) serving as a political entity that lobbies for progressive positions. In the past they’ve at least pretended to be “all about the children.” But the truth eventually slips out as it did recently when the United Teachers Los Angeles, a union consisting of 35,000 members, outlined a series of demands they want met before reopening the schools in face of the scary COVID pandemic. Here are the Union’s demands:

• privately operated publicly funded charter schools are shut down (who needs the competition?)
• police are defunded

Note: America’s Budget for K-12 education hit nearly $700 billion in 2019. Given the quality of education children have been getting since 1977, that’s a crime.

• Medicare-for-All government-run health care is passed
• a statewide wealth tax is implemented
• housing for homeless is fully funded
• “financial Support for Undocumented Students and Families”
• Oh, and they want a federal bailout too

So much for educating the children: first we have to fundamentally transform America.

The above ad for BLM was entirely paid for by the United Teachers Los Angeles

And just in case you think these demands - that suspiciously reflect the positions of BLM, ANTIFA and the new Democratic Party – are non-political allow me to disabuse you of that idea. Also from the UTLA paper:

“The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States underscores the deep equity and justice challenges arising from our profoundly racist, intensely unequal society. Unlike other countries that recognize protecting lives is the key to protecting livelihoods, the United States has chosen to prioritize profits over people. The Trump administration’s attempt to force people to return to work on a large scale depends on restarting physical schools so parents have childcare.

In Los Angeles, this means increasing risk especially in Black and Brown working communities, where people are more likely to have 'essential' jobs, insufficient health care, higher levels of preexisting health conditions, and to live in crowded housing. Meanwhile, the rewards of economic recovery accrue largely to white and well-off communities that have largely been shielded from the worst of the pandemic’s effects.”

So it looks like not only has the Cultural Revolution started but it’s been informed by the efforts of decades of public school indoctrination programs - which means it’s essentially funded by tax payers.

A well educated group of yutes topple a statue offensive to their well-honed sense of social justice

And who thought it a good idea to let people providing a tax payer funded public service form unions and go on strike? When they refuse to do the job they were hired to do they shouldn’t get paid and tax payers should get a refund. And in my opinion teachers in certain locales haven’t done the job for quite a long time so I think I deserve a large refund.

NOTE: Of course I recognize there are a lot of current and retired teachers dedicated to the proper education of the young and I appreciate that. Unfortunately they are on the wrong side of the Cultural Revolution.