Teacher Union President Weingarten Stabs Teachers in the Back - Again.

Vichy Quisling Leadership At Its Finest

Well, she's done it again. Yes, friends, Diane Ravitch's favorite protected species, Randi Weingarten President of American Federation of Teachers has been observed making robocalls on behalf of the Andrew Cuomo ticket. You can read about it here on the PJSTA blog. Before all of the NYSUT apologists get up out of their special chairs to call for order I will qualify the remark by saying it was a classic backdoor maneuver -- the type slimy political hacks with (or who happen to be) lawyers specialize in. Oh she wasn't actually shilling for Cuomo, no, far from it. What Randi was actually doing was shilling for Kathy Hochul, Cuomo's handpicked running mate whose anti immigrant/pro gun rhetoric aims to salvage some of the thousands of hunters and gun owners Cuomo pissed off in the middle of the night when his #GetMetotheWhiteHousein2016 SAFE Act was passed. Oh and she wears skirts and calls herself "Kathy" too, so we are to believe that will drive the X chromosome crowd back into Prince Andrew's camp. When asked about this, Hochul laughed and said with a straight face, Oh I think he already has the women's vote. Not sure exactly which ones, maybe the low self esteem kind who have a soft spot for bullies and control freaks? It's really tiresome to hear right wing gasbags popping off about corrupt union leadership. If there's anything worse than listening to that I think it must be agreeing with them when they say it about my own union leaders. The idea that Randi Weingarten, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party, has anyone's interests at heart except her own is laughable. That she'd work on behalf of Andrew Cuomo's running mate and Andrew Cuomo, who despises teachers and unions and especially hates teacher unions is an egregious betrayal of membership, of parents and of the students she is forever telling us she cares so deeply about. What she cares about is Randi Weingarten. Period. Whether she's hunting down the lost Nigerian girls, marching with Al Sharpton agsint NYPD, supporting Bill Gates and Common Core or burning up the phones to support one of the most notorious teacher haters in New York history, you can be sure she's working for the same goal : a better situation for Randi Weingarten. And just as AFT is a sellout group who makes deals with teacher bashers behind our backs and to our detriment but to their own micro advantage, let's not forget the little blurb our own NYSUT chatterbox Mike Deely put on Facebook for all of his friends to see a while back: 

Essentially, we have the same backdoor endorsement of Cuomo from the state union hacks that we got from the federal union hacks. Over the weekend I received my BTF endorsements in the mail and there was a soporific tangle of circumlocution prattling on about "supporting Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu" but in the box where the endorsements were listed there was none for Teachout/Wu. None. So Phil Rumore is apparently under the spell of the same demi gods as the rest of NYSUT/AFT and in spite of all the hot air and the signature raising and blah blah blah Phil is going to chicken out and say awww shucks. Well, gang I guess we have to vote for Cuomo... To which I say like hell we do. If Phil wants us parading back and forth with picket signs and hustling downtown to do the same before Board meetings he should have at least followed through on a gesture that would give us something to get fired up about. Instead he pulled another fast one, same as Deely, same as Randi and they all think we are going to shrug and pull the lever for the jackass ticket that butters their bread so nicely. The last thing I am going to do as a registered Democrat is vote for Zephyr Teachout and Tim Wu tomorrow. It may well be another pointless gesture, a Quixotic tilt at the Cuomo/Hochul windmill. It will mean something to me though, something to my students and fellow teachers and parents who've had it up to here with Cuomo and his Common Core and the fucking corporatized, soulless, spineless Democrats who think teachers owe them a living. If all we have these days is gestures, voting for Teachout and Wu is the best one I've seen in a while.