In today’s harsh world of politics it is very common to give up some benefits to your electorat in exchange for their votes. Not suprisingly, in New Jersey, the state that I live in, which has been blue for many years this practice was very common especially for democrats. As a result the state of New Jersey has one of the highest taxes in the nation and the most expensive toll roads. Interestingly, it may not be enough to balance the budget this year, unless Gov. Chris Christie will be succesfull with his fight against teachers unions and be able to make cuts in school budgets.
Here’s the story that I would like to share with you. Over a year ago, my wife decided to run for a school board position in my home town. We had very little support from our friends and most of the time it was me who was walking door to door trying to introduce the candidacy of my wife to local people. There was seven candidates who run for three positions, including two incumbants. We won. It was a great victory for a first time runner and soon after we decided to fight against cronyizm and nepotism that was widely accepted in our school system. We found out that many positions in our schools were created for friends and families of our school board members, positions which salaries well exceeded even some teachers salaries. Some people on those positions were not even qualified for the job. For example, we have a registrar who registers 100 children a year for salary of more than $80,000 with full benefits and excellent pension plan ( it is a board member’s wife) or teachers aids who made around $30,000 a year working just part time with full health benefits. Another example is a janitor who makes $120,000 salary and gets full state benefits. There are many more examples just like these. This year we helped to run a compaing for three new candidates for a school board and two of them won the election. It’ll be a very interesting two years. There is a lot cuts to be made in our school administrative positions and benefits plans and we’ll have to face teachers unions as well. Many teachers if not most of them are strong supporters of a democratic party which in a first palce gave up so much in pension plans and benefits to teachers unions in exchange for their support in each election. And this is where first major problem arised. In years, those pension plans and benefits systematically were going up, and there was nobody who could put stop to it. I applaud Gov. Christie for standing up against those unions who just demand more and do not do their jobs. Recent student test that was done in New Jersey showed how poorly our teachers perform to educate our children with some exceptions, and they demand more benefits, higher salaries and better pension plans. Most of them are tenures , have a secure job position and pension plan and no incentive to perform on the job, and it is very difficult to change that. And what do those teachers do to educate our children? Most of our students can’t even pass the basic tests not mentioning about going to ivy league schools. Couple of days ago I walked into one of the schools in my town and was astounded of what I saw. Only two teachers out of maybe twenty were actually trying to teach the students where the rest of the classes were mostly sleeping or simply playing games or talking to each other, and I can assure you that it was not a part of a curriculum. Teachers were simply not teaching! I encourage you to go to your own schools and visit them during the school hours just to see for yourself what the public education looks like nowadays. In my opinion public education failed. It is time to stop that. And here’s what we can do:
1. Get away with tenures from now on.
2. Shift the cost of health care banefits partially to teachers or drop their coverage and offer them new- free “Obama Care”
3. Raise the salaries for those teachers who perform and produce good educated students rewarding them with some kind of bonuses at the end of the year. There should be enough money in the budget to do that after droping the coverage and reducing pension plans. It is difficult but not imposibble to do.
4. Implement pension plans caps just like President Obama tried to do with salary caps for financial executives.
There is more we can do, but it depends on the individual districts.
How can we do that? Since we already have the “Obama Care” it would be more beneficial for every school baord in New Jersey to drop the expensive private insurance that teachers currently have, and pay $750 fine to the government and let teachers sign up for free government run health care since we are paying for it anyway through our taxes. You can’t do it in just one district because you may lose good teachers and your children may not get a good education. It has to be done accross the state, so teachers will have no choice but to stay in their districts or move to different part of the country, and most will stay. Second, get involved in the elections and maybe even run for a school board position. There is a lot of waste that needs to be cut - like special positions created for family members and friends of those who are on the board for many years, and many utility contracts that need to be renegotiated.
The abuse of power is not only in our local districts but also on the state level. But lets start in our local communities. That’s where the real change begins, not on the top in Washington, not in the middle on the state level but in our own home towns, in our own communities.
I’d like to have a job just like some state workers and enjoy the full pension plan, full benefits and be tenured and not to worry about the next morning when even when I lose my job I’ll get paid my salary or a good part of it. Who is going to pay for my health care and contribute to my pension plan when I’ll be fired? It’s time to end this abuse of our society, end those never ending tax increases to satisfy the unions to win their votes and come to a conlcusion that our society needs to be fairly balanced with individual responsibility with salaries paid accordingly to education and difficulty of the position that one serves in hierachy of our society.
Lets get involved in the next election and actively fight to change the course of this nation on our local, state and national levels.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/04/17/347594njgraduationrequirements_ap.html
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/01/more_than_800_nj_schools_did_n.html
The Greek example of socialism – lesson for President Obama.
In the last couple of days we are witnessing the collapse of the socialistic system in Greece. The outrageous pension plans and salaries of the government and union workers were well exceeding the salaries of those who worked in the private sector. As a result there were more beneficiaries of the system than those who were contributing to it. On the top of that Greek government continued spending money in the fast pace knowing that one day they would not be able to pay back the debt they created and face bankruptcy. And all of that in the name of power that they gained by rewarding their electorate and unions that voted for them in each election. Mark Levin described exactly what happens when the government has too much power in his book “Liberty and Tyranny” in this words:”The Founders understood that the greatest threat to liberty is an all-powerful central government, where the few dictate to the many. They also knew that the rule of the mob would lead to anarchy and, in the end, despotism.” And this is exactly what happened in Greece. That is why we need to have a separation of powers and the government that is strictly limited by the Constitution. Otherwise we’ll face the the same fate as Greeks after some time.
Is President Obama leading us in that direction? We can clearly say that the answer is “yes”. The transformation of America continues; the spending exceeds under this administration; national debt rises to unprecedented size; government expands as never before; welfare programs like Medicare ,Medicaid and Social Security are facing bankruptcy, new class of citizens depending on government handouts rises; and finally the administration seizes the private sector by nationalizing the auto industry, taking control of the health care therefore being responsible directly for our physical well being, reforming financial industry and regulating energy. On the top of that we can observe lawlessness as never before where the federal government does not respect and enforce it’s own rules and regulations when it comes to immigration. Off course you may say that America is not Greece but clearly we are heading in the same direction. It may not happen in a year or two but in a decade or two when we’ll be facing similar problems. The conclusion is only one; socialism in any form does not work and destroys the society. It’s been tried and tried but the results are always the same: few benefits and many suffers. Socialism spreads misery equally instead of lifting everybody up,, socialism destroys opportunity instead of creating it, it destroys the private property rights and confiscates the wealth instead of creating it and it never creates productive jobs instead redistributes fruits of production in very unequal way.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03mark_levins_liberty_and_tyrann.html