During the Tacoma teacher strike the Tacoma News Tribune had by far and away the best news coverage of any mainstream media source. But man alive were their editorials brain numbingly awful. Well, congrats to the Trib for keeping up that fine level of nonsense. In an editorial about how we need the kind of bullshit education reforms that haven’t worked in other states, they serve up this gem:
As usual, the Legislature’s powers-that-be crouch like defensive NFL linemen, ready to tackle anything that might challenge the failing trade-union model of public education.
I don’t have clue one what “trade-union model of public education” even means. Most of these reforms seem to be just ways to commodity children and sell them to charter school corporations regardless of performance. The rest seem to just be ways to break the union. If the I-saw-Waiting-For-Superman-and-now-I-hate-teachers crowd were serious about reform, they’d work with the teachers: they are among the most interested parties after parents and possibly students.
I mean the idea here seems to be that politicians (and editorial board writers) demagoguing the issue or bureaucrats administering tests are the ones who really care about education. Yet those politicians who’ve spent far too much time cutting education funding and the ed boards who cheered them on at every tax cut that made those cuts inevitable continue to attack, attack, attack the unions. They have far less credibility than teachers unions that have been fighting those cuts and the bullshit reforms at every step of the way.
And yet instead of working with the teachers’ unions to both fund K-12 education and make reforms that make sense, it’s attack, attack, attack. No, let’s trust teachers.
Also, “defensive NFL linemen” for serious is how you’re going to construct that phrase? Not “defensive linemen” and trust your readers to know what that means? Not “NFL defensive linemen” that at least has the advantage of not putting NFL in the middle of what the position is called for no reason?
Wells Fargo Bank is being sued by an 85-year-old woman who was forcibly taken to a hospital by police after the bank’s debt collector falsely reported that she threatened suicide. It’s the bank employee, not the woman, who needs psychiatric evaluation.
http://preview.tinyurl.com/7sjodnq
Roger Rabbit Commentary: He’s not the only one who needs psychiatric evaluation. What is it with rich white male Republican newspaper owners that gives them all a pathological hatred of unions? Those people are a menace to their employees and communities, and should be committed for 90 days of observation. If that doesn’t straighten them out, commit them for another 90 days.
There is profit to be made on the processing of human resources. Allowing teachers to have a collective voice in the matter of education gives them too much power. Any petty dictator who claims they run their business like a family knows this.