AZ teaches’ strike leader admits, “Teaching is political”

Propagandizing students is educrats’ game plan

Today Seeing Red AZ is taking a road never previously traveled since our inception in 2007.  We are sending our readers directly to another site — in this case, Breitbart — where Dr. Susan Berry Ph.D, has written an illuminating exposé on Noah Karvelis, a radically leftwing elementary school teacher leading the indefensible teachers’ strike set to take place in our state on Thursday.

Twenty-four-year-old Karvelis has urged his colleagues on Twitter to teach political activism to their students and to discuss with them gun control, white supremacy, and anti-capitalism.

Never forget the “underpaid” teachers, who work 81/2 months a year, are able to support the far left teacher’s unions* to the tune of $millions a year, earmarked for Democrat candidates and liberal causes.

These same people are undermining the values conservative parents try to instill in their children.  Karvelis, a cool hip-hop music teacher, volunteered on the presidential campaign of self-admitted Socialist Bernie Sanders. Additionally Karvelis has been a political consultant and staff writer for the Progressive Times, which defines itself on its masthead with this banner: “Progressive, independent journalism for the political revolution.”

This is akin to putting Marxists in charge of educating our children. Noah Karvelis, and others like him, are dangerously influencing America’s youth, steering them away from democracy that flourishes in our representative Republic, and into the liberty killing fields of Socialism.

* Center for Responsive Politics

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AZ Reps. pitch funding striking teachers by legalizing pot

Arizona Democrat Mark Cardenas (LD 19) and his House of Representatives Republican buddy Todd Clodfelter (LD 10) have joined in a novel bipartisan effort to fund teachers who are demanding a 20 percent pay increase. The teacher’s scheduled strike takes place this Thursday, leaving the students they claim to care about stranded and missing crucial class time.

Sending a terrific message to the impressionable school children, State Reps. Cardenas and Clodfelter are renewing their previous efforts to legalize pot in Arizona. This time the pretext is to help pay for teacher raises.

Read their bill, HCR 2037, titled “marijuana, regulation and taxation,” that includes a provision for 40 percent of the net revenues be directed to a public education grant program that would be administrated by a task force appointed by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, which would solicit, receive, review and evaluate applications and award grants.

No kidding!

The Governor’s Office of Strategic Planning and Budgeting projects 20 percent teacher raises will cost state taxpayers about $650 million.

In 2016, Arizona voters rejected Prop 205, which would have legalized recreational use of the drug. This was SRAZ’s exposé regarding the facts behind the deceptive legislation.

Keep in mind teachers are represented by far-left unions. The $ millions teachers pay in dues fund liberal politicians and their causes.

Teachers unions have steadily amped up their political involvement: From 2004 to 2016, their donations grew from $4.3 million to more than $32 million — an all-time high. Even more than most labor unions, they have little use for Republicans, giving Democrats at least 94 percent of the funds they contributed to candidates and parties since as far back as 1990 when Center for Responsive Politics initially began collecting data.

Passage of ballot propositions — 301 in 2000 increasing the state sales tax and 123 in 2016 a grab from the state land trust — guaranteed more money for education, which apparently is never enough. Teachers protest and school districts hold budget overrides and bond elections to “get more money into the classroom” —- eduspeak for bolstering teacher’s salaries. A major premise of passing the Arizona Lottery in 1980 was that money from ticket purchases would make its way to schools.

State Reps. Mark Cardenas and Todd Clodfelter are shameless lightweights who both need to be primaried in their respective districts. Not only do their constituents deserve better, but so do the rest of us who would have to function under their deceptive legislation. Arizona’s students have become the undeserving pawns in their reckless escapade.

Read 10 Facts You May Not Know About Education in Arizona. It’s news you need and aren’t getting. Armed with the facts, it’s time for informed parents to march. The only roadblock is they have jobs where their presence is required. And unlike teachers, they don’t have the luxury of frequent half days, lengthy holiday vacations or the entire summer off.

Unionist teachers vote to strike, ditch students, lose parents

Union goons use children as pawns, demonstrate education is not their priority

Gov. Doug Ducey made an enormous miscalculation when he thought he could placate teachers with a colossal 20% pay increase. With their Thursday night vote to stage a walkout, they have proven that nothing is good enough to satisfy them for the 8½ months a year they work.

Teachers pay dues to left-wing unions. Ducey should never have entered the negotiation mix.  District school boards set wages. He needs to govern the state and let the teachers use their unions which spend $millions on far left candidates and issues. Look at the last column on the final chart* to see where the “underpaid” teachers send their money.

This is an instructive memory jogger: NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin told the truth as he spoke candidly on the occasion of his retirement. This is what the agenda actually is. It is not America’s public school children, as he plainly states. The National Education Association (NEA*) supports liberal candidates and issues to the exclusion of Republicans. Its members are the people who are influencing American students, not only politically but also instructing them in the methods of mob rule.

Now the emboldened National Federation of Teachers (check this out) has announced it is severing its ties with Wells Fargo Bank, no longer recommending the bank as a preferred mortgage lender to its 1.7 million members,  over the bank’s association with the Second Amendment supporting NRA.  Exercise your rights. Join “freedom’s safest place” today.

*H/T Center for Responsive Politics

Students learn the art of mob rule from teachers

Emulating their protesting teachers who staged walkouts, abandoning their students to demand an outrageous 20% pay hike, the kids who have learned little educationally have become adept at demanding.  Not understanding the significance of the Second Amendment, they want gun control, and the brash, under-educated students want it now.

Here in Arizona, they are going to the state capitol — possibly for the first time — to stage a “die in” to protest school shootings by lying on the ground in a mock death pose.  Using mob-like tactics, they also plan to occupy several government buildings to demand Gov. Doug Ducey support stricter gun control laws. The demands and antics are coordinated with students nationwide.

The date was chosen to commemorate the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado. In 1999, two maniacal students killed twelve students and a teacher, before killing themselves. The assassins deliberately chose the date to coincide with the birthday of Nazi mass murderer Adolf Hitler.

Organizers are not satisfied with Gov. Ducey’s school safety plan which includes placing officers in Arizona schools.

The National School Walkout has a Walkout Planning Guide and announced this three part goal:

1. Hold elected officials accountable
2. Promote solutions to gun violence
3. Demystify and engage students in the political system

If the students were properly educated, there would be no need to “demystify” our system of government.

A decidedly liberal approach is manifest in this tip to protesters titled, “A Note on Safety and Privilege.” White privilege is the latest crime for which atonement must be made, and these radicals haven’t left that out of the equation:

“Guidance on how to plan your actions to ensure that no one is asked to take on a role that they are not comfortable with, and how to be mindful of the fact that not everyone walking out faces an equal level of risk.”

The Arizona legislature is scheduled to begin debate on the issue later this week. According to the daily newspaper’s report, student marchers have derided the governor’s efforts, calling it “51 pages of utter BS.” They also view any efforts at reform as placating the National Rifle Association.

The demonstrators need to talk to Kim Corban, (brief video) who calls the National Rifle Association, “Freedom’s Safest Place.”

These are the educrat liberals behind the Network for Public Education, the moving force propelling the anti-Second Amendment organization, propagandizing* America‘s easy to manipulate under-educated youth.

* Center for Responsive Politics

 

 

Educrats offer sticks & stones to protect kids from violence

These administrators don’t have their party affiliation revealed, but we’re betting they’re liberal Democrat teacher’s union members *

Have you heard the good news?  Shootings taking the lives of innocent students and teachers are a thing of the past, thanks to the wisdom of William Hall, Millcreek School District Superintendent in Erie, Pennsylvania. The man is nothing if not innovative. Assumedly he devised this strategy himself, since we haven’t heard of anyone else wanting to share credit for it.

The Washington Free Beacon reports on the sheer brilliance of Hall’s foolproof idea to bring safety to our schools.

Bats! 

The 16-inch bats were recently distributed to each teacher following an in-service training day on how to respond to school shootings.

“This is a tool to have in the event we have nothing else,” said Millcreek Education Association president Jon Cacchione.  “Part of the formula now, is to fight back, and so I think the bats that were provided for the staff were symbolic of that.” Cacchione says he supports the decision to arm teachers with bats, which will be locked up in each classroom.

Hasn’t the “formula” always been to fight back? “Symbols” of retaliation against a shooter, are irrelevant to those who think lucidly.

Even though the school district he oversees is in Erie, you’ll notice the spelling is the same as the canal, not eerie, as in darkly sinister. The bats aren’t the nocturnal sort, either. They are small. and incapable of inflicting damage to a person with a gun.

Gong Erie’s Millcreek Distict even one better, the Hill reports David Helsel, the superintendent of Blue Mountain School District in rural Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania has armed students with buckets of rocks as a “last resort” against armed intruders.

Bucket of rocks! 

Every classroom now has a five-gallon bucket of rocks that students can hurl in the event there is an active shooter.

Our Constitutional framers, who enshrined the Second Amendment immediately following the guarantees of free speech and assembly in the First Amendment would be appalled by the blatant ignorance of these educrats. In 2008, the Second Amendment rights of the individual to keep and bear arms were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in  the case of District of Columbia v. Heller.

Several years ago conservative radio personality Michael Savage wrote a book titled, “Liberalism is a mental disorder.” His words ring of brilliance.

*Center for Responsive Politics

Goldwater Institute sets teachers straight on pay complaints

Frequently mistaken for a conservative organization, the Goldwater Institute (GI) is deeply rooted in fiscal Libertarianism, which has no social component, ie: it is not pro-life. At one time, it rated state legislators with its highly anticipated Legislative Report Card, which has been replaced by a “Donate Now” tab. Goldwater also  took positions on ballot issues, but those days are long gone.  Taking positions means offending some donors, which is not a smart business model.

The person answering the phone was new enough not to have been aware that GI gained its political creds and respect within the state for its list of top legislators and promotion of ballot  issues it deemed worthy.

During the 2016 election cycle, GI took no official position on ‘Legalize Marijuana,’ launched as Prop. 205. The ballot measure advocated recreational use, but was sold to voters as a medical necessity, allowing for the proliferation of dispensaries featuring ‘doctors’ who never saw a youthful patient who was not experiencing chronic pain. 

Voters rejected Proposition 205 in Arizona by a vote 0f 51.32% t0  48.68%. The proposition called for legalizing possession and recreational consumption of marijuana by those 21 and older. Medical marijuana was legalized in Arizona in 1996.

Neither did GI take a position on the disastrous minimum wage hike that actually caused many low wage workers to lose their jobs when their small business employers were forced to reduce staff as salaries were artificially and incrementally hiked. 

Proposition 206 increased the Arizona hourly minimum wage from $8.05 to $12 by 2020, forcing employers to provide additional benefits and exceed the federal minimum wage of $7.25 jumping pay to $10 soon after the election. In numerous instances, this overreach actually defeated the intent of the proponents of the new law. It passed by a vote of 58.33% – 41.67%.

Goldwater Institute is a behind-the-scenes proponent of illegal immigration, which its Chamber of Commerce donors — many illegal labor profiteers — support. The group even hammered Sheriff Joe Arpaio in two separate reports in which they castigated him for enforcing the law.

But veering into the realm of education, attorney Victor Riches, President and CEO of the Goldwater Institute, gets it right with his column, “The Truth About Teacher Pay.”

As the father of nine children, he knows a thing two about his subject and who is responsible for setting teachers’ salaries — a pertinent fact which even the striking teachers abysmally lack knowledge, though they can teach climate alarmist/pseudo scientist Al Gore‘s science of global warming …er… climate change and recycling while omitting cursive as they short shrift American history, Constitutional studies and classic literature.

 We encourage you to read Victor Riches’ article. 

AZ Gov. Doug Ducey caves to teachers’ outrageous demands

Though his press secretary denies it, Ducey is looking ever more like a guy with senatorial aspirations

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey had a chance to stand tall. Instead he rewarded the abysmal behavior of union teachers who abandoned their students to strike for a massive 20% raise.  He played tough for a nanosecond, telling the teachers there was no pay hike in the near future, then reneging, followed by an acquiescence or two preceding the final capitulation. If nimble Ducey didn’t have his eye on a mighty political payoff, he could fill the role of state contortionist.

Instead of emulating President Ronald Reagan who on Aug. 5, 1981 fired 11,359 unionist air traffic controllers of the almost 13,000 who went on strike in defiance of his order for them to return to work, issued two days earlier.

Reagan, a former two-term Screen Actor’s Guild union president, didn’t stop there.  He declared a lifetime ban on the rehiring of the strikers by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Within days the FAA began accepting applications for new air traffic controllers, and ultimately the Federal Labor Relations Authority decertified the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Association (PATCO).  Robert Poli, PATCO president, was found in contempt by a federal judge and ordered to pay $1,000 a day in fines, for the disruptions his union caused. 

There were inconveniences during the strike and after Reagan made good on his threat, (video) but such a strike never happened again.

Ducey is thinking politically instead of on behalf of Arizona students abandoned by their striking teachers, who should also have been fired if they didn’t return to work.  He appears to be letting his future political aspirations get in the way of sound judgment. Ducey’s longtime friend and mentor John McCain, diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer in July 2017 has remained at his compound in Cornville, AZ. missing crucial votes. The Arizona senate seat is not a museum piece. 

Ken Rudin, Political Junkie, answers the question about governors appointing themselves to the U.S. Senate. It has happened. Of the nine going back to 1933, all but two were Democrats and the results were uniformly dismal.

Joy Pullmann, an author and executive editor of The Federalist, does a masterful job with this commentary, “Fire All Striking Teachers And Send Their Paychecks To Students’ Parents.” Obviously it was not on Ducey’s reading list.

It should be.

Education Week, a publication of the liberal teachers’ union, clearly states teachers plan to ride this victory to effect changes across the Arizona political landscape.  The teachers, who overwhelmingly vote Democrat, have no allegiance to Ducey.

Today’s front page shows a smiling Ducey surrounded by educrat admirers, who got their way, via protests and walk-outs, which the teachers coyly termed, “walk-ins.” The headline blasts, “The winners today are the teachers”

A further look reveals the truth, with this line under the photo, “K-12 advocates skeptical, say walkout still planned.” There is no pleasing a riotous mob. They should have been fired.

Don’t lose sight of the fact that this is where the people who influence our children and grandchildren put their union dues.*

* H/T Center for Responsive Politics