It looks like we’ll finish with a total of 89 new business items (NBIs), which is about average for the NEA Representative Assembly. Among them are:
NBI 62: Calls on NEA in conjunction with its affiliates to establish a charter school organizing program. Before everyone starts running to the parapets, union staff placed a price tag of more than $3.6 million on the measure. It won’t pass without severe modification.
NBI 64: “The NEA will review the possibility of offering a ‘Friends of Public Education Card’ to the public for a fee. This card will permit the carrier to purchase items from the professional library at a discount and access online educational resources.” An even better idea would be to force them to have a card and take the fee out their paycheck, unless they opt out between July 1 and July 15.
NBI 83: Submitted by a Massachusetts delegate and signed by 50 of his peers…
NEA shall attempt not to do business in hotels where the selected TV channels in the guest rooms are evidently to express only one political viewpoint. We are all aware that Fox channels are there to advance the conservative viewpoint while MSNBC is a channel to espouse the liberal viewpoint of the political debate. Therefore, NEA (both at the National and State levels) shall attempt to conduct business only at hotels that do not patently disseminate one viewpoint while suppressing the other (opposing) political viewpoint with their choice of channel line-ups.
Rationale/Background
Current efforts by millionaires and billionaires to control political messages in the traditional airwaves also extend to include the hotels we rent. In effect, it is a tacit endorsement by NEA of the one-sided messages from these hotels. While hotels have a right to select the types of channels they want for their guest rooms, NEA equally has a right and an obligation to send a message to these hotels about the imperative of disseminating both sides of the political messages.
I have nothing to add.
NBI 87 directs the NEA president to write a letter to President Obama expressing disappointment that he got on a bus out of town as soon as they arrived and didn’t visit the convention in person.
