Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE NYSUT loves all of them but Amedore Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.
To show you how far I will reach for entertainment, I have been perusing the list of state legislative candidates endorsed by New York State United Teachers, or NYSUT. Not a lot of laughs, though I do get a kick out of the union's bipartisanship, belying the stereotype of the Democratic Party as the party of organized labor. NYSUT, as well as other public employee unions, simply endorses whoever is in power, regardless of party, to which state legislators respond by faithfully passing whatever pension enhancements and other giveaways the unions demand, also regardless of party. One thing that amused me this time was the fact that the only sitting legislator against whom NYSUT endorsed a challenger was George Amedore of Rotterdam, a Republican who won election to an empty seat in the last go-around, a year ago, as a protege of Jim Tedisco, the Assembly minority leader. Even Assemblyman Mike Fitzpatrick of Long Island, the one legislator who regularly opposes the union giveaways approved by his colleagues, didn't get a NYSUTbacked opponent. A few suffered the lesser hardship of neutrality, that is, no endorsement one way or the other, like Darrel Aubertine of Watertown, whose transgression was support for school vouchers, but that is no more than the hardship suffered by the renegade Fitzpatrick. Out of 212 Senate and Assembly seats, Amedore is the only incumbent facing a NYSUT-backed opponent, in the person of Schenectady City Councilman Mark Blanchfield. Amedore himself had no explanation beyond the high-minded one that "leaders need to put people's interests first "” maybe they don't like the fact that I think that." NYSUT spokesman Carl Korn offered only that "local leaders recommended Blanchfield over Amedore based on the simple fact that they felt they had a better working relationship with Mark Blanchfield." I was looking for something more decisive, but maybe it's not there. True, Amedore supported a cap on school property taxes as proposed by Gov. Paterson, which is anathema to the teachers' union, but so did 38 senators who actually voted in favor of the tax cap, something the Assembly never got around to doing. After first withholding its blessing from those senators, NYSUT relented and blessed them after all. What happened was, the financial crisis trumped all other concerns. Facing something like a $2 billion deficit, the state will have to do something drastic to balance the books, and education is one place where there is a lot of money to be saved, along with Medicaid. You can't save $2 billion just by nickeland-diming state parks. So it suddenly became more important to the teachers' union to prevent any staunching of the flood of money to schools than to forestall a tax cap. Thus when the Senate Republican leader and the Senate Democratic leader both said they would not countenance any reduction in state money to schools, NYSUT swallowed its pride on the local tax cap and endorsed the sitting senators of both parties. That endorsement is not a small or airy thing. As union Vice President Alan Lubin said, "Candidates receiving NYSUT's endorsement can expect to see union activists handing out flyers, sending out mailings, walking door to door, working the polls, and manning the state's largest network of phone banks." So you can see why legislators from both parties are so subservient to the union's interests, even to the point of promising no spending cuts when facing a $2 billion deficit.
So the teacher's union is against Amedore? Hmmm...as a taxpayer, does that make you for or against him? does it influence your vote one way or another? I always wondered about that and about the rank and file who are 'told' whom to support one way or the other. Do you think that the individual union members listen one way or another to what the officials in the union tell them? It has always been something that made me curious...
"While Foreign Terrorists were plotting to murder and maim using homemade bombs in Boston, Democrap officials in Washington DC, Albany and here were busy watching ME and other law abiding American Citizens who are gun owners and taxpayers, in an effort to blame the nation's lack of security on US so that they could have a political scapegoat."
That endorsement is not a small or airy thing. As union Vice President Alan Lubin said, "Candidates receiving NYSUT's endorsement can expect to see union activists handing out flyers, sending out mailings, walking door to door, working the polls, and manning the state's largest network of phone banks."
Perhaps there are some union loyalists who will vote for who their union tells them to vote for. But more importantly is exactly what is stated in the above. They will actually 'campaign' for the candidate they support. So the issue isn't just the union loyalists, it is the people outside of the union that they can influence. And we all know that there are plenty of 'sheeple' out there that will allow themselves to be led by the nose!
So we have 'union sheeple' and 'non-union sheeple' And there are the few left who just plain old gather their own facts and make their own decision based on the facts they gather.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
There comes a time when the unions have to stop sucking the life out of the communities who have to pay for their salary and benefits, and that time has come.
Sometimes they are good, too often they have been corrupted by politics and favoritism.
"While Foreign Terrorists were plotting to murder and maim using homemade bombs in Boston, Democrap officials in Washington DC, Albany and here were busy watching ME and other law abiding American Citizens who are gun owners and taxpayers, in an effort to blame the nation's lack of security on US so that they could have a political scapegoat."
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