Posts Tagged ‘unions’

Chicago Teachers Union molding Soviet-style Young Pioneers

Posted: March 17, 2024 by John Ruberry in education, election 2024, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Mrs. Marathon Pundit, third from left, at Young Pioneers event in Sece, Latvia, in 1976.

By John Ruberry

On Friday, the far-left Chicago Teachers Union organized a rally for voting age Chicago Public School students, during school hours, the “Student Power Forum.” 

They might as well have called it the Young Pioneers march.

The event was co-sponsored by Bring Chicago Home, which is working to pass a referendum, also called Bring Chicago Home, that will increase Chicago’s real estate transaction tax on properties selling for more than $1 million.

Election day in Illinois is Tuesday.

Proponents call Bring Chicago Home a “mansion tax,” but many retail storefronts and apartment buildings, and probably all skyscrapers, are worth more than that. I call it a jobs killer and a rent raiser. Funds from the tax hike, if voters approve it, will aid the homeless. No specifics are given as to how the homeless will benefit from Bring Chicago Home.

Of course, Chicago’s leftist mayor, Brandon Johnson, enthusiastically supports Bring Chicago Home. Johnson, who prior to his election as mayor, had no executive experience, but he’s a former CPS teacher and a longtime Chicago Teachers Union organizer. 

The rally, argues the center-right Illinois Policy Institute, likely violates CPS ethics rules, and the group quickly filed an ethics complaint. CTU called that move “racist.”

Now that Johnson is mayor, it’s difficult to ascertain a difference between Chicago Public Schools and the Chicago Teachers Union. Johnson, besides being a former CTU employee, appointed six of the seven members of the Chicago Board of Education. Johnson is a mentor of CTU president Stacey Davis Gates–she has a son attending a Catholic high school–and she recently suggested, as collective bargaining between the two “separate” entities could end up costing taxpayers $50 billion. I hope she was joking.

CPS and CTU will be negotiating against itself. Let’s call them CPS/CTU.

Let’s return to the Young Pioneers. Regular readers here and my own blog know that Mrs. Marathon Pundit was born in Latvia when it was part of the Soviet Union. Enrollment in the Young Pioneers was mandatory after children turned nine. Nadezhda Krupskaya, Vladimir Lenin’s wife, was a driving force in the creation of the Young Pioneers. Similar groups were founded in most of the other communist states. 

Krupskaya recognized that young minds are malleable and vulnerable to manipulation. So does the Chicago Teachers Union. 

Some of the Young Pioneers activities were similar to what the Girl Scouts enjoy, Mrs. Marathon Pundit told me, but there was some communist indoctrination that she had to endure.

These are the four leftist education Rs: Reading, writing, arithmetic, and radicalism. 

CPS/CTU is heading in that direction in regard to kids.

As for the first three Rs, CPS/CTU is doing a wretched job in addressing them. In both reading and mathematics, only about 20 percent of CPS seniors perform at grade level.

There is some good news. Chicago conservatives–yes, they exist–found some surprising allies in opposing CPS/CTU pulling voting age students out of school to attend the Bring Chicago Home rally. Former Chicago alderman Dick Simpson, as well as journalists Eric Zorn and Laura Washington–all liberals–have decried the move.

As I mentioned earlier, there are no specifics on how Bring Chicago home revenue will be spent, assuming the referendum passes. But the Chicago Teachers Union has an idea. According to a leaked document obtained by the Illinois Policy Institute, CTU will be making a not-so-surpising demand as part of its focus on housing, which it says, “begins now with Bring Chicago Home on March 19.” At the top of the CTU list is this shakedown, “Financial assistance for CTU members to live & work in the city.”

Are there homeless CPS/CTU teachers?

Chicago’s high school “Young Pioneers” are what Lenin called “useful idiots.”

There could be five Rs in Chicago schools soon, rent assistance for teachers would be the fifth.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

School lockdowns lead to urban carjacking spike

Posted: April 11, 2021 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, News/opinion
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By John Ruberry

The COVID-19 school lockdown continues in America’s biggest cities, despite clear evidence that children are unlikely to become seriously ill from that virus.

One unintended consquence of the closing of public schools to all but remote learning is more crime–and especially more carjackings. 

It is no longer just conservative media calling attention to the link to the school lockdowns and carjackings in big cities. Although CBS was artful in its report in a story last week. “Investigators say the trend is driven by 12 to 15 year olds with time on their hands during the pandemic,” CBS News said. These kids have more time on their hands because their schooling consists of Zoom instruction something CBS omitted in its story.

Last month a 66-year-old UberEats driver, Mohammad Anwar, a Pakistani immigrant, died while clinging to his vehicle in Washington DC after being tased in a carjacking by two girls, a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old. A bystander took video of the crime–which has gone viral. 

“You know, idle minds are the devil’s playground. And a lot of these kids, they’ve been idle for a year and a half now without going to school. And that’s been a big problem,” Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo told Fox News last week.

In that CBS story referenced earlier it was also reported, “The number of carjackings has exploded during the pandemic. Carjackings have increased by more than 100% in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Minneapolis. They are up more than 343% in Washington, D.C.”

Let’s look at Chicago. The pusillanimous nature of the local media creates an opening for straightforward sources. One of those news sites is Hey Jackass! and it reports the raw numbers of carjackings. Well sort of. Stick with me on this one. In 2019 there were 603 reported carjackings and 1,396 last year. So far in 2021 there have been 404. But here’s the kicker. “Carjacking data comes directly from the CPD’s own data set,” Hey Jackass! warns, “so add 20% to obtain the true number.” 

There’s a lot of speculation about why carjackers commit their crimes. Thrill is probably one of them, but also often vehicles are carjacked to aid other crimes. Perhaps it’s a mix of the two. Just last night, another great local crime site, CWB Chicago, told us of a 55-year-old woman who was pushed to the ground inside a Target parking lot as her Audi was carjacked. The criminals drove away with her car and the one they arrived in, a Kia, which was likely carjacked near the University of Chicago a couple of hours prior. Percentage-wise since 2017 the arrest rate for Chicago carjackings has been in the single digits, according to Hey Jackass!

On April 19 Chicago’s public high schools are scheduled to re-open, although how that occurs varies from school to school. Of course the recalcitrant Chicago Teachers Union, citing new COVID-19 numbers, is opposed.

Mental health among students has suffered during the lockdown. 

Once the school lockdowns end–and I believe they will one day–don’t expect the carjackers to give up their horrible hobby. 

Businesses in Chicago, already suffering from 13 months of lockdowns, rioting, and looting, are receiving another hit. Suburbanites, for good reason, are afraid to travel to the city. And the carjackings occur in all neighborhoods, rich, poor, and in between.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Chicago teachers demand smaller class size by striking, but enrollment is already declining

Posted: October 20, 2019 by John Ruberry in education, News/opinion, politics
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Chicago Teachers Union member at a 2012 Occupy Chicago rally–classes were in session that day

By John Ruberry

Chicago Teachers Union members are on strike again, 300,000 students and their parents have to reshuffle their weekday routines. 

In Chicago and many other big-cities, school is more than being an educational institution. Three quarters of Chicago Public Schools students qualify for government paid-for or subsidized lunches, many also qualify for breakfasts under similar circumstances. 

Or maybe schools in Chicago are less than being an educational institution as barely one-in-four students read at grade level, despite most schools having “College Predatory” and “Excellence” in their names. But CPS schools serve, even when there isn’t a strike, sadly as day center centers.

While meals are still being provided at CPS schools since the strike began last week, the walkout is hurting those that the Chicago Teachers Union purports to represent, the kids and their families. Parents are taking time off work to watch their children. Chicago’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has offered teachers a 16 percent pay raise, but union leaders say that they are striking for, wait for it, the kids and their hard-pressed parents.

On the other hand, the CTU is advocating for a financial program for teachers and support staff so they can purchase a home in Chicago. Wait, aren’t Chicago taxpayers paying teachers and other CPS employees so they can buy a home? There is plenty of affordable housing in Chicago, just not so much in the fashionable neighborhoods on the lakefront.

The quick reaction to the strike is that Chicago has no more money, as the city is essentially bankrupt due to unfunded public worker pension obligations, including those for teachers. But somehow the cash to end the strike will be “found,” although it will likely involve borrowing from Judas so the city can rob Peter to pay Paul. If that last sentence doesn’t make sense then you are not from Chicago

One of the CTU’s key demands is a familiar one, smaller class size. But that issue should be taking care of itself as for three straight years CPS enrollment has dropped by 10,000. Twenty-six CPS high schools have fewer than 270 students and two of them fewer than 100. These schools were built to accommodate much larger enrollments. But that didn’t stop CPS from opening a new high school in Englewood, a neighborhood whose population has dropped by two-thirds since 1960.

And Chicago’s overall population is declining, leading the charge of the Illinois Exodus that has been going on for five years now

Incompetent and corrupt government reaps a poor harvest. And the money that Lightfoot will need to “find” to end the Chicago teachers strike will hasten the Exodus. And fewer taxpayers means less money.

John Ruberry blogs from the Chicago area at Marathon Pundit.

Wisconsin Unions: meet Wisconsin law and a class action suit waiting to happen.

Posted: March 31, 2011 by datechguy in opinion/news, the courts
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On the Charlie Sykes (620 WTMJ Milwaukee) show in Wisconsin they are commenting on the “protection” racket that the unions are using. Let’s remind you of what the unions are saying:

“Failure to do so will leave us no choice but (to) do a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means ‘no’ to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members.”

So in other words as far as the unions are concerned you MUST take a position and it must be theirs or they will get you. One Republican legislator called in and suggested business so contacted check out chapter 943.30 of Wisconsin law and start making complaints

So let’s take a look at what Wisconsin law states, specifically Wisconsin Statutes > Criminal Code > Chapter 943 > Subchapter III > § 943.30 – Threats to injure or accuse of crime:

943.30
943.30 Threats to injure or accuse of crime.
943.30(1) 1) Whoever, either verbally or by any written or printed communication, maliciously threatens to accuse or accuses another of any crime or offense, or threatens or commits any injury to the person, property, business, profession, calling or trade, or the profits and income of any business, profession, calling or trade of another, with intent thereby to extort money or any pecuniary advantage whatever, or with intent to compel the person so threatened to do any act against the person’s will or omit to do any lawful act emphasis mine, is guilty of a Class H felony.

Note that since according to the letter sent out to businesses a “neutral” stance is not allowed, the union is COMPELLING the person to act against their will or suffer the consequences. That makes this section active and makes the union letter written proof of a class H felony.

A class H felony in Wisconsin carries a max of 6 years a fine of $10k or both.

And the second section is even more interesting:

943.30(2)
(2) Whoever violates sub. (1) by obstructing, delaying or affecting commerce or business or the movement of any article or commodity in commerce or business is guilty of a Class H felony.

So that means that if you are a protester as part of the promised boycotts or picket of a business based on the above letter: Presto! You are subject to this same penalty!

And in our litigious society wouldn’t you like to be the lawyer starting a class action suit against the Unions who are boasting of full coffers and financial support to fight in Wisconsin? Can you imagine the size of the civil suit and award in a case like this? You want to sue people with a lot of money or insurance for a big payout. The local sub shop who gets the letter might not have it but the Union that sent it does. Every business who got that letter is a potential member of the class and the unions who supported this campaign and their national counterparts is a potential target. It’s a money tree!

I’m amazed a union lawyer didn’t spot this but it’s what comes of arrogant and unchecked power.

Update: Big Government was on this first but didn’t think of the class action angle, Ann Althouse is bother by the police involvement:

I can’t get my head around the concept of police involvement in boycotting businesses. That reads like pure corruption. I can’t believe it’s being done openly. Can someone explain to me how you can even argue that it is acceptable for police to extort political support from citizens?

If you ever wondered why the left always seemed to side with totalitarians, now you know.

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