What about the (poor) kids?

David Frum had an excellent column in Saturday’s National Post.  In Suffer the (poor) Children, Frum exposes the not so hidden agenda of the D.C. Teachers’ unions after they spent $1-million on political spending to defeat a reform-minded candidate that they did not want:

“They mobilized their members (at least, those of their members who live in the city—most D.C. teachers actually live in the suburbs, so as to avoid sending their own children to the schools in which they teach). They won.”

and further,

“More probably, the teachers’ unions have sent a message to every urban Democrat in the United States: Your first priority is to protect our jobs, all of our jobs, whether we perform competently or not. If you instead put children and learners first, we will crush you.”

Keep all this in mind as we approach the next Ontario provincial election.  Remember the “Not this time, Ernie” ads in 2003?  Read about their high-jinks in 2007 here and here.  From one of the articles:

“Critics have charged that the Working Families Coalition, comprised of numerous unions representing sectors such as teachers, autoworkers and construction, is a Liberal party attack-dog and that its affiliated unions benefited in provincial funding and decisions for their support.”

Blogger Steve Janke tried to find out about them and wrote about the experience here.

Discontent is brewing and the Working Families Coalition, or whatever they will call themselves this time, will be pooling resources to fight the same fight in the 2011 election.  They will certainly want to protect the gains made over the last seven years—after all, it’s for the kids!

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