John Maynard Keynes

The reason why Keynesianism is so popular is because it appeals to envy (destroy the rich) and jealousy (steal from the rich). It appeals to the deep-seated desire of a man who is not highly productive to vote into office someone who will send out officials with badges and guns to steal the wealth of the most productive members of society. Keynes offered the voters what they wanted, and he offered the politicians what they wanted.

This is why it is virtually impossible today for the conservative movement to triumph over the Keynesians. Keynesian envy is in the hearts and minds of virtually all the voters, and that includes the Tea Party people. Keynesianism is almost universal, and Keynesian Tea Party members who think they are free marketers are in fact defenders of people with guns and badges who are out to steal from the productive members of society.

I have no idea how this is going to be reversed, other than the preaching of pastors against envy and jealousy, which pastors do not have the courage to do, because they have pro-Keynesian members of the congregation. We rarely hear sermons on the great evil of envy: the desire to pull down a superior. I cannot remember even one. We do hear sermons against covetousness, but never in the context of the welfare state.

Keynesianism has burdened the conservative movement ever since the mid-1940s. It is why there are so few Austrian economists. The built-in Keynesianism of modern social philosophy is almost universal: “Blame the rich!” That is why a reform of the present system, apart from complete bankruptcy of the federal government, is unlikely.

John Maynard Keynes gave the public what it wanted. Voters want a justification for stealing the wealth of rich people who got rich through their own productivity.

The envy and jealousy of the masses against the productive members of society who have given society most of its wealth is so widespread that we cannot reverse the modern welfare state. The voters want their goodies, and they are going to elect politicians who promise to give them these goodies at somebody else’s expense. The voters will be disappointed. They are going to get what they deserve good and hard.

This is a matter of ethics. There are rival laws at stake. One is this: “Thou shalt not steal.” The other is this: “Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.” Keynes is the premier economist of the second position.

via Krugmans Clones: Conservatives Who Hate the Free Market and Hate the Rich Even More.

Medvede, Obama, Putin, Ahmadinejad – Global Government

Obama Foreign Policy: Anyone out there who helps us on the war on terror will be sacrificed for political purposes.

Obama Foreign Policy: Any CIA undercover agent will be sacrificed for political purposes.

Obama Foreign Policy: If a freedom movement rises up against an oppressive tyrannical government, Obama will say nothing in order to score points with the regim with whom he is negotiating.

Obama Foreign Policy: Reset relationships with archenemies and give them everything they want at the expense of burgeoning constitutional governments.

Obama Foreign Policy: Get ride of Billionaire Dictators that can interfere with his global domination plans. i.e. Mubarak, Gaddafi, Osama & Ben Ali of Tunisia.

Barocky Road Ice Cream Cone

In honor of the 44th President of the United States , Baskin-Robbins Ice Cream has introduced a new flavor: Barocky Road.

Barocky Road is a blend of half vanilla, half chocolate, and surrounded by nuts and flakes. The vanilla portion of the mix is not openly advertised and usually denied as an ingredient. The nuts and flakes are all plentiful.

The cost is $92.84 per scoop…so out of a hundred dollar bill you are at least promised some CHANGE..!

When purchased it will be presented to you in a large beautiful cone, but after you pay for it, the ice cream is taken out of the cone and given to the person in line behind you at no charge.

You are left with an almost empty wallet, staring at an empty cone and wondering what just happened. Then you realize this is what “redistribution of wealth” is all about.

Aren’t you just stimulated?

Larry Sand President California Teachers Empowerment Network

In September of 1975, due to New York City’s dire fiscal situation, I was laid off from my teaching position at P.S. 125 in Harlem. I lost my job not because I was a bad teacher, but because I was hired a few months after the teacher in the room next to mine…who was a lousy teacher.  Using seniority, or last in/first out (LIFO), as a way to determine who keeps their job is wrong. It stank 37 years ago in New York and it’s no better in California in 2012.

Thirty-three other states leave these kinds of staffing decisions to local education agencies, but in California, LIFO is written into the state education code. However, this and more may be about to change. If successful, a lawsuit filed last week in Los Angeles by Students Matter would shake up the way California conducts much of its educational business. John Fensterwald writes,

Students Matter is the creation of David Welch, co-founder of Infinera, a manufacturer of optical telecommunications systems in Sunnyvale. The new nonprofit filed its lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday on behalf of eight students who attend four school districts. A spokesperson for the organization told the Los Angeles Times that Los Angeles philanthropist Eli Broad and a few other individuals are underwriting the lawsuit. They have hired two top-gun attorneys to lead the case: Ted Boutrous, a partner in the Los Angeles law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and Ted Olsen, former solicitor general for President George W. Bush.

The lawsuit asserts that five “outdated statutes” prevent administrators from making employment decisions in students’ interest. The tenure statute forces districts to decide after teachers are on the job only 18 months whether to grant them permanent job status. Once granted tenure, they gain due-process rights that make it expensive and difficult to fire them even if they’re “grossly ineffective.” And then, when an economic downturn comes – witness the last four years – a Last In/First Out (LIFO) requirement leads to layoffs based strictly on seniority, not competency.

Organizations that have signed up for the suit as advisors are major players in the educational reform world. They include:

• Democrats for Education Reform
• Education Trust-West
• New Schools Venture Fund
• Parent Revolution
• Students First
• Students for Education Reform

Of course California shouldn’t need a lawsuit to end such an onerous system. But the sad fact is that it does for the simple reason that too many people in power have become way too comfy and have too much invested in the abysmal status quo. The teachers unions’ raison d’être will suffer if teachers started being treated as professionals and not interchangeable widgets. School boards will have to stop being doormats for their local teachers unions, take more initiative and come up with evaluation systems for teachers that have teeth. And school administrators will have to conduct teacher evaluations that ensure the best ones keep their jobs and the bottom performers are shown the door. Principals need to know that if they don’t accurately assess teachers, they could be out of a job. In short, there will be real accountability for all the players.

So far, very little has come out of the teachers’ and principals’ unions about the Students Matter lawsuit and the California School Board Association has also been mum. At this point, the only recorded comment on the lawsuit has come from the California Teachers Association president who in typical union fashion tried to redirect the conversation and duck any responsibility for the educational mess we find ourselves in. Dean Vogel said,

…the debate about teacher tenure and dismissal is being driven by the state’s economic crisis, which has drained education funding and resulted in waves of layoffs.

No Mr. Vogel, the debate has been brought to a head by the economic crisis, but is driven by people who actually care about how children are educated and miseducated in California.

In addition to LIFO, the suit attacks tenure which can be attained in California after just two years, essentially guaranteeing a 23 year-old teacher a job for life. Over ninety-eight percent of teachers in California get tenure, and once it’s granted, getting rid of a teacher is just about impossible. Fensterwald again,

The protection of ineffective teachers “creates arbitrary and unjustifiable inequality among students,” especially low-income children in low-performing schools, where less experienced teachers are hired and inept veteran teachers are shunted off, under a familiar “dance of the lemons” since they can’t be fired. Because education is a “fundamental interest” under the state Constitution, the five statutes that “dictate this unequal, arbitrary result violate the equal protection provisions of the California Constitution” and should be overturned. 

According to Troy Senik in the Los Angeles Times,

… teachers in California — even terrible ones — are virtually never fired. A tiny 0.03% of California teachers are dismissed after three or more years on the job. In the last decade, the L.A. Unified School District, home to 33,000 teachers, has fired only four. Even when teachers are fired, it’s seldom because of their classroom performance: A 2009 expose by this newspaper found that only 20% of successful dismissals in the state had anything to do with teaching ability. Most involved teachers behaving either obscenely or criminally.

The lawsuit includes a chart which shows the ridiculous lengths that a school district must go through to get rid of an underperformer or a teacher involved in criminality once they have attained tenure.

Interestingly, another lawsuit, filed last year, has a court date in a few weeks. If successful, this litigation, which concerns itself with the state’s 40 year-old Stull Act, would be something of a companion to the Students Matter case. While the Los Angeles Unified School District is targeted in the Stull suit, if it flies, there would be statewide ramifications. As I wrote in January,

For nearly 40 years, the Los Angeles Unified School District has broken the law—and nobody seemed to notice. Now a group of parents and students are taking the district to court. On November 1, a half-dozen anonymous families working with EdVoice, a reform advocacy group in Sacramento, filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against the LAUSD, district superintendent John Deasy, and United Teachers Los Angeles. The lawsuit in essence accuses the district and the union of a gross dereliction of duty. According to the parents’ complaint, the district and the union have violated the children’s “fundamental right to basic educational equality and opportunity” by failing to comply with a section of the California Education Code known as the Stull Act. Under the 1971 law, a school district must include student achievement as part of a teacher’s evaluation. Los Angeles Unified has never done so: the teachers union wouldn’t allow it.

Thus, if the Stull lawsuit is successful, each school district in the state will be required to come up with its own method of evaluating teachers, but they all must use evidence of student learning via a standardized test as a component. If the Students Matter case then succeeds, there will already be evaluation systems in place to supplant LIFO. Incidentally, none of this is exactly revolutionary. At this time, 23 states currently use student performance on standardized tests as part of a teacher’s evaluation.

While the Students Matter case would go a long way toward getting California up to speed, even more would need to be done to restore the Golden State’s once great public education system. But as RiShawn Biddle says, there can be no denying that this lawsuit “is another important step in developing new strategies for advancing systemic reform.” This suit will bring up issues that the entrenched special interests don’t want to discuss. But their tired old spin will give way to the shakes as the earth begins to realign itself and the educational landscape changes.

Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.

And would Mr Obama reverse the fundamental principles of the United States Constitution for the sake of a short-term solution to a global economic problem? (Well, actually, maybe he would. Given his egomaniacal tendency to regard the Supreme Court as a turbulent nuisance when it obstructs his plans, he might not be the best exemplar of constitutional probity.)

Let’s say this again, just in case a single sentient being on the planet has missed it: Germany cannot simply decide to bail Greece (or Spain, or Italy, etc) out of its debts. OK? However much Angela Merkel is nagged, berated, bullied and patronised by Barack Obama, David Cameron, or the BBC/Guardian axis that regard the preservation of the euro project as critical to their own interests, she cannot just revoke, in a unilateral act, the rules of German government or of the Bundesbank.

Her persistent refusal to “take decisive action” of the kind that would suit the purposes of all those clamorous voices at the G8, is not “dithering”, as it is so often described. In fact, it is not (or not entirely) to be explained in any of the mildly contemptuous ways that her tormentors suggest. It does not arise from an unthinking, superstitious terror instilled in her by the Weimar nightmare of hyper-inflation. Nor is it a narrow-minded expression of the German hausfrau’s values of thrift and self-discipline. What Mrs Merkel is doing, quite appropriately, is defending the integrity of her national constitution, the economic principles on which her country’s economic success has been built, and the interests of her own electorate.

As the leader of a democratic state, what else should she be expected to do? Would Mr Cameron, who is busily assuring us that he will always put the needs of this country first, be chivvied into throwing over the interests of his own citizens for the sake of another national population that has come to grief largely as a consequence of its own misjudgments? Last week, he called for the “pooling [of] fiscal sovereignty” among the eurozone countries. Would he be willing to give up his Government’s right to determine its own tax and spending policy?

And would Mr Obama reverse the fundamental principles of the United States Constitution for the sake of a short-term solution to a global economic problem? (Well, actually, maybe he would. Given his egomaniacal tendency to regard the Supreme Court as a turbulent nuisance when it obstructs his plans, he might not be the best exemplar of constitutional probity.)

In truth, if Mrs Merkel’s reluctance to churn out euros on the Bundesbank printing presses is based on anything other than the straightforward illegality of such a step in German terms, it is probably rooted in more recent associations than Weimar. East Germany is the spectre that hovers over this debacle: the Soviet model of a phoney currency that is manufactured to meet political requirements and which – at the point of national collapse – may simply be exchanged, as the Ostmark was, at an arbitrary nonsense rate in order to avoid pauperising an entire people. That is where Mrs Merkel (and the rest of us) might well see the euro heading if the “decisive action” merchants get their way: not just toward dangerously inflationary levels, but to the status of a fictional currency that can be expanded at will to prop up an ideological delusion.

via Europe finally awakes from its utopian dream – Telegraph.

Lawmakers are scrambling to save the summer concert season from federal agents poised to seize the instruments of rock and country stars because the wood used to make them may have been illegally harvested–and without their knowledge.

“I don’t want the musicians from Nashville who are flying to Canada to perform this summer to worry about the government seizing their guitars,” said Tennessee Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander.

Alexander, whose state is home to famed Gibson Guitars used by bands and stars like Van Halen, the Allman Brothers, Sheryl Crow, Ted Nugent and Paul McCartney, said Friday that he and Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden are working to protect the artists, their instruments and makers and eventually change the law governing illegal wood harvesting.

“Senator Wyden and I are going to write the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service a letter in the next couple of weeks and try to make it clear that wood harvested before 2008 to make musical instruments can’t be seized by the federal government,” Alexander said in a statement. “The Justice Department and Fish and Wildlife have said they have no intention of doing that, but Sen. Wyden and I are going to make it absolutely clear. We hope to get a clear ruling within a few weeks, and if we can’t get a clear ruling, we’ll introduce legislation to change the Lacey Act.”

The 112-year-old Lacey Act regulates the trade in bird feathers for hats and was amended in 2008 to cover wood and plants. The goal: make sure the woods used were not exported in violation of another country’s laws.

Their goal is to protect wooden instruments built with materials imported before 2008, when the Act was expanded. “This law was never intended to apply to those instruments,” said Alexander.

They are also working to help companies like Gibson–raided by the Feds recently–figure out what imports are legal.

Wyden and Alexander met with representatives from the music industry, wood import business and environmental and conservation groups Thursday to settle on a solution.

“We held this roundtable because instrument makers like Gibson Guitars in Tennessee are an important part of our music industry, and if the Lacey Act as written is keeping them from being able to get the wood they need to make instruments, we need to make every effort to fix the regulation,” said Alexander.

“The law was intended to prevent illegal logging and protect U.S. job that are threatened by illegal logging, it was never intended to seize instruments or wood products that were obtained prior to the passage of the Lacey Act amendments in May 2008 because they were made from imported wood—and when laws have unintended consequences, Congress has a responsibility to promptly make changes,” he added.

via Feds threaten to disrupt summer concerts | Washington Examiner.

EDITOR”S NOTE: We at PopModal Videos do not ascribe to the notion that Obama is not a U.S. citizen. However, this evidence should go to Obama’s character in regards to his ability to lie without remorse and for political manipulation of the New York Time, LA Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, ABC, NBC, and CBS.
Jeffers M. Dodge – Editor

Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obamas then-literary agency, Acton & Dystel, which touts Obama as “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.” The booklet, which was distributed to “business colleagues” in the publishing industry, includes a brief biography of Obama among the biographies of eighty-nine other authors represented by Acton & Dystel. It also promotes Obamas anticipated first book, Journeys in Black and White–which Obama abandoned, later publishing Dreams from My Father instead.

via The Vetting – Exclusive – Obamas Literary Agent in 1991 Booklet: Born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.

Larry Sand President California Teachers Empowerment Network

“No Education Reform Without Tackling Poverty, Experts Say,” is the title of an article on the National Education Association website. Experts? A trip into the weeds leads to something called the Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy at Georgetown University. Its main benefactor is none other than the Open Society Foundations run by former Nazi sympathizer, rabid America hater and megalomaniac, George Soros, a man who once said he saw himself as “some kind of god, the creator of everything.” Expecting anything without an agenda from this bunch would be foolish.

The NEA’s “experts” claim that pouring money into education will eradicate poverty is wrong on all counts. For example, they state that children would be better educated by attending a “high quality pre-school.” Yet Head Start, according to Reason’s Lisa Snell, U. of Arkansas Professor Jay Greene and others, has been a bust.  In 2010, Lindsey Burke at the Heritage Foundation wrote,

Taxpayers have been on the hook for more than $100 billion for the Head Start program since 1965. This federal evaluation, which effectively shows no lasting impact on children after first grade and no difference between those children who attended Head Start and those who did not, should call into question the merits of increasing funding for the program, which the Obama administration recently did as part of the so-called “stimulus” bill.

So, $100 billion later, children are no better off attending a preschool, but what’s important to the unions is that more adults are employed. And that means more dues for them to spend on their progressive political agenda which favors causes that have nothing to do with education – e.g. abortion on demand, same-sex marriage, income redistribution, and nationalized health care. In 2010-2011, NEA spent $133 million in lobbying and gifts to further its progressive agenda.

Also, with all the union kvetching, one might assume that we stint on education spending. In fact, in the U.S. since 1970, education spending has increased 150 percent. Compared to other countries around the world, we are number four in spending after Luxembourg, Switzerland and Norway. Yet,

The three-yearly OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, which compares the knowledge and skills of 15-year-olds in 70 countries around the world, ranked the United States 14th out of 34 OECD countries for reading skills, 17th for science and a below-average 25th for mathematics.

Thus the problem is not the amount of money we spend, but how it’s spent. Charter schools typically lead to better educated kids and save us money at the same time. Inner city charter school operators like Eva Moskowitz and Geoffrey Canada and the KIPP schools do a far better job – with fewer tax dollars – than traditional public schools. Even taking the superstars of the movement out of the mix, charter schools outperform traditional public schools. As Jay Greene writes, “Charter Benefits Are Proven by the Best Evidence.”

But no, the NEA doesn’t back charters. And the reason it doesn’t has nothing to do with education; it’s because charters are individually run and therefore very hard to unionize. In fact, only 12 percent of the nation’s 5,500 or so charters are unionized.

If the teachers unions were really serious about improving education and eradicating poverty, they would support the ultimate in school choice – voucher systems. A voucher would give a kid a chance to opt out of a failing public school and use his education dollars to pay for a private school of his choice. This would level the playing field for poorer families. However, the unions can’t abide vouchers because public schools would lose students to private schools, which are not unionized.

Eliminating the twin evils of tenure and seniority would go a long way to improving the current teaching force, by ceding more power to individual school districts. Bad teachers should be fired and the good ones should get raises. Better teachers can also handle slightly larger classes, thereby reducing the overall number of teachers we need.

But saving the taxpayers money, leveling the playing field for the poor, ceding power to local education agencies and thus having fewer dues-paying members are solutions nowhere to be found in the union playbook.

The nation’s education woes began about forty years ago – right at the time the NEA became a major force in education. Certainly other social trends have contributed to the educational morass we find ourselves in, but the National Education Association, the nation’s #1 poverty pimp, is the main reason for it – all the time using young children as pawns while vigorously pursuing its political agenda. Despite all the warm and fuzzy platitudes they spew, it is obvious that the teachers unions are not terribly interested in the education of our children or helping them get out of poverty.

Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.

Caucus Members Co-Chairs
Keith Ellison (Islamist)
Raúl Grijalva

Vice Chairs
Tammy Baldwin
Judy Chu
William “Lacy” Clay
Sheila Jackson-Lee
Chellie Pingree

Whip
Hank Johnson
Senate Member
Bernie Sanders

via Congressional Progressive Caucus : Caucus Members.

Larry Sand President California Teachers Empowerment Network

The National Education Association celebrated “Stand Up To Bullying Day” on May 4^th. Its website is full of advice about how to deal with what it calls “everyone’s problem.” With a solemnity ordinarily reserved for a Sunday morning sermon, NEA has created a pledge –

I agree to be identified as a caring adult who pledges to help bullied students. I will listen carefully to all students who seek my help and act on their behalf to put an immediate stop to the bullying. I will work with other caring adults to create a safe learning environment for all the students in my school.

Please note, the union talks only about children bullying other children; there is nothing about adults bullying other adults.

Few adults in the country know more about bullying than Kristi Lacroix, a parent of five in eastern Wisconsin and according to her principal a “very good teacher.” Lacroix made a brief video late last year in which she spoke well of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker – aka “Hitler” to many teacher unionistas in the Badger State because he led the charge to remove teachers’ collective bargaining rights. Many in teachers unions believe that collective bargaining is sacrosanct, a human right; it’s not. In fact, it survives only because union heavies and their legislative fellow travelers in certain states have made sure that that this Soviet style group-think is law.

Lacroix has been a target of Alinskyite teacher union venom for months now. There is a “fire Kristi” movement that has led to a vicious hate mail attack from members of teachers unions. Luckily, Lacroix is anything but a shrinking violet and has stood tall and started her own website in an attempt to tell her story and lead the charge against the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s NEA affiliate.

Sad to say, Lacroix is far from the only teacher victimized by bullying. Actually, teacher unions, despite their public concern for children, can be quite brutal. In fact, the NEA asking anyone to take an anti-bullying pledge is akin to “Uncle Joe” Stalin asking people not to bully the Ukrainians.

Recently, Joy Pullmann, managing editor of School Reform News, published an important report – Bullying Teachers: How Teachers Unions Secretly Push Teachers and Competitors Around which is summarized as “When Bullies Grow Up, They Can Always Run Teachers Unions,” an op-ed in the Washington Examiner. She explains that teacher union bullying is rampant and can come either directly from the unions or as a result of fear of them. For example,

Many superintendents and principals in Kansas will not even let Garry Sigle give teachers information about his nonunion teacher organization. One superintendent told Sigle, “Why would I want to [let you talk to teachers in my district] if I knew that would create an issue between me and a union I have to negotiate with?”

In February, a Utah teacher named Cole Kelly testified in favor of a bill that would penalize school districts for not granting all teacher organizations — not just unions, but also other professional organizations — equal access to teachers. A week later, he was released from his position as athletic director, which for school districts is tantamount to firing. His principal admitted she approved of his job performance but had released him because of pressure.

Subsequently, other teachers texted Kelly to say they agreed with him but were afraid of being fired if they spoke out or left their union. He is contesting his release.

This spring, a Colorado teacher emailed the state director of a nonunion teachers association, explaining why she wouldn’t publicly speak for a bill extending the state’s two-week window for ending union membership.

“They [the state union] are a large and powerful organization,” she wrote. “I want to speak out against them, but I am afraid of the repercussions that I will face as a result and the possibility of them doing something to make me lose my job.”

At a new teacher orientation in Jacksonville, Fla., a union representative heard a presentation by a nonunion group. She walked onto the stage before 600 teachers, accused the presenter of being “a desperate former teacher” and stalked about the room ripping up the competition’s fliers, said Tim Farmer, membership director for the Professional Association of Colorado Educators.

As sickening as these examples are, Pullmann goes on to say that they are not isolated incidents.

Teachers unions engage in repeated, unashamed aggression against dissenting teachers and competitor organizations.

As we can see, teachers are frequent victims of teacher union bullying, but to show that they are fair–minded and equal-opportunity coercers, the California Teachers Association recently did a bang-up job of bullying parents in Adelanto, a town in eastern California. Not liking the results of a Parent Trigger vote at a local school, CTA sent in its finest arm twisters, I mean representatives, and “convinced” many of those who signed the petitions to have a “change of heart.”

While I’m sure that most teachers are not in accord with thuggish union activities, it is not enough to stand on the sidelines and wish the problem away. It is imperative that teachers speak out against teacher union bullying. While Kristi Lacroix has indeed received some positive mail, it typically comes from teachers who do so privately and, because of the fear factor, will not publicly criticize their union. If a lot more teachers don’t speak up, however, the public has no choice but to assume that their silence is tacit approval of the unions’ actions, thus earning them the justifiable enmity of a populace that is rapidly getting sick and tired of teacher union antics.

May 9^th is the “Day of the Teacher,” but perhaps the day should be renamed “Stand Up To Teacher Union Bullying Day.” It would be a good time for dissident teachers to come forth and take a stand. For a profession that is supposedly demoralized, this could be the first step to “remoralization.” And yes, there are other professional organizations that they can join that provide them with many of the same perks and protections and save them money at the same time. But while The Association of American Educators, Christian Educators Association International, Educators 4 Excellence, California Teachers Empowerment Network, et al are all growing, the teachers unions still predominate. And union heavies are lying in wait, ready to bully the next brave teacher who dares to take issue with the union party line.

Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.