More Random Thoughts

A couple more random comments on news items.

1. The benefits (at least for teachers) of a union can be seen in this story from the AP and reprinted on Fox News. To summarize, hundreds of New York City teachers who are under suspension for one reason or another (each teacher has his own story, and all claim to be innocent, of course) are required to report to a "rubber room," where they have basically nothing to do. Some teachers are there for years. They still get full pay, however, because the union rules require them to be paid even while they are suspend. Moreover, the rules require that these suspended teachers continue working at tasks that do not directly involve teaching. The estimated yearly cost for this situation is $65 million. (Comment: We spend $65 million for basically nothing, and we wonder why our average per-pupil expenditure is so high!) Of course, a big part of the problem is that every tenured teacher (who are the ones who get reassigned to this "rubber room") has the right (again, thanks to the union contract) to have a disciplinary hearing with an arbiter. There are 23 arbiters in New York City. They work 5 days a month. (Comment: What?! So, we have teachers who, legitimately or not, are trapped in a sort of limbo and can't get out because the arbiters who are supposed to adjudicate their cases are only available 1 day a week? What sort of nonsense is this? Oh, wait, a union's involved. Never mind. I'm not shocked anymore. I have to wonder if unions have perhaps outlived their usefulness...)

2. The scary (and foolish) cap-and-trade legislation is headed to the floor of the House. This poorly-conceived, scientifically-flawed legislation is exactly what we don't need in this struggling economy. According to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, the average annual cost of this legislation per household is $175. Big deal, most of you probably are saying. But consider those who are not rich, such as myself. I'm a teacher, and unlike my counterparts in New York, I don't make huge amounts of money. The only way I'm going to get an extra $175 a year out of my budget is to cut about $15 a month out of my budget, meaning that I am going to have live on the bare-bones necessities if this legislation passes. And to make matters worse, this bill, which purportedly will help combat global warming, will do nothing of the sort, since global warming is a naturally-occurring phenomenon that we have absolutely no control over. So, we're going to spend a ton of money to enact a program that won't solve anything. All it will do is bankrupt more Americans who are already struggling in this faltering economy. I hope that this legislation fails miserably. This is the sort of "change" I feared would happen if the Democrats got control of both Congress and the White House. Get used to bad ideas coming out of Washington for a while. Socialized medicine is next. Get ready to wait in line. :-(