One of the biggest threats to the economic future of our state and our country are teachers’ unions. Let’s just be honest about this, shall we? The unions are responsible for continually draining money out of your pockets. Some of that money goes to teachers, and I certainly don’t begrudge them a pay increase here and there–the Lord knows they have a tough job. But how much of those increases actually go to the teachers, and how much of it gets funneled back into the Democrat Party in the form of PAC money?

Here’s an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article from 2006:

If we told you that an organization gave away more than $65 million last year to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Amnesty International, AIDS Walk Washington and dozens of other such advocacy groups, you’d probably assume we were describing a liberal philanthropy. In fact, those expenditures have all turned up on the financial disclosure report of the National Education Association, the country’s largest teachers union.

We already knew that the NEA’s top brass lives large. Reg Weaver, the union’s president, makes $439,000 a year. The NEA has a $58 million payroll for just over 600 employees, more than half of whom draw six-figure salaries. Last year the average teacher made only $48,000, so it seems you’re better off working as a union rep than in the classroom.

Here in New York, disgraced former Governor Eliot Spitzer had appointed a commission to make recommendations on controlling skyrocketing property taxes. I can tell you from personal observation in house hunting that property taxes in New York are double what they are for a comparable house just over the border in Pennsylvania–and that’s NOT an exaggeration. Nice house in PA? Plan to spend around $2,500 per year in property taxes. Here in NY? Easily $5,000–or more. And it keeps going up!

Later this week the commission appointed by Spitzer will deliver their report and recommendations on controlling property tax increases. Already the teachers’ unions in New York are moaning and groaning “it’s for the children” and that New York’s children will be at a severe disadvantage if we don’t drain every last dime from taxpayer’s wallets. It sickens me. In anticipation of a recommendation to cap property taxes and actually make schools hold the line and not increase spending each year, the unions are floating a shell-game alternative called a “circuit breaker”:

Teachers’ unions and other education interest groups are already on record against a cap. Instead, they back the circuit-breaker idea, which would limit what a person pays in property taxes based on income. Once property taxes go over a certain level, the circuit breaker would kick in. The state would pay 70 percent of property taxes over the threshold. (Press & Sun-Bulletin, May 19)

So, you can’t afford to pay obscenely high property taxes? No problem, “the state” kicks in and pays the rest. Umm, teacher…may I ask who, exactly, is “the state”? Oh that’s right…the state is the people of New York State. So teachers’ unions are recommending we reach around and pull the money from a different pocket on the same person. The point is: All of the pockets are taxpayer’s pockets! “The state” does not generate revenue on its own nor does it magically pull it from the air. “The state” can only tax people and businesses and take their money away from them to fund such cockamamy schemes. And a good portion of that confiscated tax money flows to liberal causes–our tax money put to good use, eh?

Wouldn’t it be great to work for a teachers union and make a six-figure salary and not have to worry about paying high property taxes?

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