Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

The Sacramento Bee is reacting to the California Teachers Association letter-writing campaign about its “anti-teacher” editorial cartoon as any self-respecting newspaper would: It ran the cartoon again… along with another editorial:

As usual, such campaigns tend to backfire. Today, we ran a letter from a writer who received an email from the CTA saying she express her outrage. Instead of doing so, she wrote this to us:

I am outraged that every time the overpaid, self-serving, self-important CTA union bureaucrats get attacked, they try to turn it into an  attack on teachers. CTA does not represent students, period. For that matter, it does not even truly represent teachers.

In my view, CTA does represent teachers. It is unfortunate, however, that so many of them  would reflexively engage in a campaign aimed at stifling a particular point of view.

According to their collective bargaining agreement with the state of Illinois, members of AFSCME Council 31 were due a 2% wage increase on July 1.

Gov. Pat Quinn said legislators didn’t appropriate the money for the raises, so he can’t pay them.

An arbitrator ruled the state has to pay.

I just saved you 6,500 words of reading. You’re welcome.

The California Teachers Association deems this editorial cartoon “anti-teacher” and urges members to complain.

Click here to read:

1) Teachers’ Unions: Back to the Future

2) Last Week’s Intercepts

3) Battle of the Pig Proverbs

Delaware State Education Association president Diane Donohue received accolades for her role in helping her state receive the first of the Race to the Top awards. Some thought it odd when she decided not to run for a second term after such a triumph.

But not to worry. Donohue won’t have to return to teaching. The state department of education created a new position just for her – “special assistant for educator effectiveness.”

See? Investing in education does lead to job creation.

Dateline – Washington, DC:

The FBI joined the investigation into an attempted armored truck robbery in northwest D.C. Thursday.

A Brink’s truck was making a pickup at the National Education Association headquarters café in the 1200 block of 16th Street just before noon when two masked men approached with guns drawn. One pointed a gun at the head of a guard.

Another guard stepped in, and the men fled on 16th Street toward Montgomery County, Md., in a blue 2004 Porsche Cayenne that police said was carjacked in Arlington, Va., Wednesday night. The tags are XCN5171 or XCN6171.

“The cafeteria is opened Monday through Thursday and we believe they were after the proceeds for the week,” said Andrew Linebaugh, of the NEA.

The Brink’s employees were not injured.

Through my impeccable sources I was able to obtain a poor-quality photograph of the perpetrators. Be on the lookout.

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ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον…

Thus begins one of the great classical sagas and bane of Jesuit high school students – The Odyssey. “Tell me, O Muse, of the man who was never at a loss…”

It’s a shame that such descriptions have mostly fallen out of favor, except in sports. Why can’t we automatically refer to public figures as Richard the Lionheart, Ethelred the Unready or Lorenzo the Magnificent?

This line of thought was prompted by Andrew Rotherham‘s mention of Steven Brill’s upcoming new book, Class Warfare. I decided to find out what I could about it, and came across its blurb on Amazon.

I don’t know if the book is any good, but the blurb gives me hope that nicknames could make a comeback. Randi Weingarten, for example, is referred to as “an anguished national union leader who walks a tightrope between compromising enough to save her union and giving in so much that her members will throw her out.”

I don’t remember what the opposite of πολύτροπον would be, but what Randi has sounds like it.

On this blog, from now on she will be Randi the Anguished. Long may she reign.