{"id":183956,"date":"2012-09-24T20:10:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-25T01:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/09\/24\/if-you-f-your-base-long-and-hard-enough-they-wont-be-your-base-anymore\/"},"modified":"2012-09-24T20:10:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-25T01:10:00","slug":"if-you-f-your-base-long-and-hard-enough-they-wont-be-your-base-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2012\/09\/24\/if-you-f-your-base-long-and-hard-enough-they-wont-be-your-base-anymore\/","title":{"rendered":"If You F%$# Your Base Long and Hard Enough, They Won&#8217;t Be Your Base Anymore"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Attempts by mainstream Democrats to turn education into another private sector profit center from which they can extract campaign donations is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/09\/25\/us\/politics\/challenged-by-old-allies-teachers-unions-court-gop.html\">starting to piss off teachers<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The strike by public school teachers in Chicago this month drew national attention to a fierce debate over the future of education and exposed the ruptured relationship between teachers\u2019 unions and Democrats like Mayor Rahm Emanuel.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Over the past few years, even as Republicans have led efforts to thwart unions, lawmakers previously considered solid supporters of teachers\u2019 unions have tangled with them over a national education agenda that includes new performance evaluations based partly on test scores, the overhaul of tenure and the expansion of charter schools.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">As these traditional political alliances have shifted, teachers\u2019 unions have pursued some strange bedfellows among lawmakers who would not appear to be natural allies.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">In Illinois, the top two recipients of political contributions from the Illinois Education Association through June 30 were Republicans, including a State House candidate who has Tea Party support and advocates lower taxes and smaller government.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cThe notion that just because you\u2019re a Democrat\u201d you can take the teachers\u2019 unions for granted has changed, said Jim Reed, director of government relations for the Illinois Education Association.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">As teachers grapple with a reform agenda backed by hedge funds and large philanthropic donors and championed by the Obama administration as well as some conservative Republicans, the unions are navigating a delicate political landscape where they increasingly pursue friends in unlikely places. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There are <b>way<\/b> too many Democrats, including Barack Obama and his Secretary of Education Arne Duncan who think that handing our schools off to hedge funds is a good thing.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not.<\/p>\n<p>The creation of the educational-industrial complex, much like the  creation of the prison-industrial complex, and their granddaddy, the  military-industrial complex, are a disaster for our society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Attempts by mainstream Democrats to turn education into another private sector profit center from which they can extract campaign donations is starting to piss off teachers: The strike by public school teachers in Chicago this month drew national attention to a fierce debate over the future of education and exposed the ruptured relationship between teachers\u2019 &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[968,1023,978,1022],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-183956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-labor","category-politics","category-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183956"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}