NEA New Hampshire is a-gush over the anniversary of the Stimu-less bill and they are not afraid to show it. According to NEA-NH Insider the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)…
…represents a huge win for education thanks to unprecedented funding increases targeted to local districts. ARRA also included increases for Title I, stabilization funding, and school construction bonds. This adds up. The US Dept. of Education saw funding increase $159.4 billion – an increase of 169%.
That’s a 169% funding increase to a department President Reagan wanted to eliminate. And more proof of what we already knew; the stimulus was a hand out to prop up government employees at every level regardless of the taxpayers (or their children or grand childrens) ability to pay for it. The NEA NH Insider continues…
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has saved approximately 325,000 education related jobs nationwide. Dr. Christina Romer, head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), stated that state stabilization funding to states has been "one of the triumphs" and has had "more bite than we would have thought." Dr. Romer’s observation affirms the economic value to the nation of what was one of NEA’s major priorities in the stimulus package, and reinforces our argument in favor of continuing such aid through an Education Jobs Fund.
Translation: Your tax dollars laundered into Union dues payments that go back into the pockets of liberal legislators like Hodes and Shea-Porter so they can continue to vote more public sector payroll initiatives.
It’s a viscous cycle that can only be broken by breaking the back of public sector unions, something no democrat will ever condone, which highlights the profane hypocrisy of the left. Unions are big business. But unlike industry they are funded and paid for by taxpayers through acts of government that then protect and entrench them like a bulwark between incumbents and the electorate. And while government has and does use its power to benefit business, (and both parties are culpable on various counts of enriching themselves as part of that process) public sector unions are the part of the government the voters can’t get out of office. They are the bureaucracy that consumes vast chunks of every dollar of taxes, even before it gets to the teachers or some other favored sector.
So for the indefinite future taxpayers who lacking the resources of large national unions like the NEA, will never be able to face them equally on any issue, not with money, not with ground troops, and not with public relations; but that is no reason to stop trying. And at the first opportunity, we need to use the power of the people to roll back the stranglehold of public sector unions.
