re: "Teachers union mortgage will finance campaign" (Washington Times, 8/18/05)
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050817-115602-6177r.htm

[A shorter version of this was sent as a letter to the editor.]

To the Editors:

The California Teachers Association (CTA) is mortgaging their headquarters in order to help fund advertising to oppose ballot measures supported by Governor Schwarzenegger. The building is being used as collateral, although payment of the loan amount of about $60 million will be from future union dues.

This is truly astounding. The fact that a union can think it is worth spending $54 million to beat ballot initiatives means that the union itself is far too big a business to actually care about quality of education.

The measures on the ballot would
1) increase the time it takes for a teacher to receive tenure,
2) implement "paycheck protection", so that union dues can not be used for political purposes without permission of the union member, and
3) Limits state spending to a formula (somewhat reminiscent of Colorado's very successful TABOR amendment).

Each of these measures is bad for the union, despite the fact that they are good for the state.

Making tenure take longer to get means that bad teachers can be fired during their first 5 years instead of just the first two years. The union doesn't care about quality of teachers; they just want members to be permanent as quickly as possible so they can collect dues forever.

Paycheck protection limits the ability of the CTA to conspire with their wholly-owned subsidiary, the state's Democratic Party. It's very simple how this works: The CTA gives money to the Democrats who pass legislation which aims to maximize CTA revene some of which then goes to the Democrats and the cycle goes on until broken by aggressive laws and courageous politicians (not Democrats).

And limiting state spending growth means that the Democrat-controlled legislature can't simply implement unlimited increases in public education spending (much of which ends up in union coffers) without having to limit spending in other areas. The proposed rule would require some spending discipline that is anathema to union greed.

Money is a powerful weapon...the most powerful weapon...in politics, and the CTA will probably be the single biggest pile of money on either side of the issue. However, the substance of these issues is so strong that I believe the CTA will lose at least two of these measures. Passing these measures is good for students, good for taxpayers, and appears, based on CTA actions, bad for unions. Each of those things brings a smile to my face.